


Selfish

by ignatzfan



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Baking, Canon Compliant, Cats, Confessions, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cute Kids, Domestic Fluff, F/M, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Making Out, Meeting the Parents, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Snow, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing, a little bit saucy, im adding more tags as i go, just a little
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:00:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 38,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23637943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignatzfan/pseuds/ignatzfan
Summary: Felix and Lysithea reunite by chance three years after the end of the war against Those Who Slither in The Dark. They've both spent their free time after the war very differently.Cakes are baked, cats are named, memories are made.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Lysithea von Ordelia
Comments: 48
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello this is my first fic and i wrote it because i got their ending in my first fe3h playthrough and it crumbled my heart and i love them so much so here you go 
> 
> also it is set in verdant wind route but i tweaked some minor details about what other characters ended up doing/who they sided with in the war etc etc 
> 
> find me on twitter @fhirdiad_! i hope u guys enjoy :)

Year 1189, Guardian Moon

Felix spits blood. Covered in all sorts of cuts, stabs and slices, he forces himself through the forest, dragging his sword on the ground; his other hand switches between holding pressure on the stab in his abdomen and supporting himself against trees he passes. He can feel himself slowing and his energy depleting. Maybe eight ruffians at once is one too many. He did win, though.

“Fuck,” he exhales to himself as he slumps down against a tree, deciding this is where he’ll stay and wait for his wounds to get the better of him. The grey sky casts a dim light through the thick winter leaves as his surroundings grow foggier with the blur of his vision. He closes his eyes. He waits.

He remains there for what feels like hours, his body refusing to give in, even if his mind has long been set on dying. It’s quiet, and somewhere in the early hours of a grey morning. The sound of birds chirping and leaves rustling in the slight wind is suddenly interrupted by one of the last voices he expected to hear.

“Felix?” Lysithea questions as she kneels in front of him, weave basket full of woodland berries and baked goods in hand. Realising he’s alive, she can’t help but make a snide remark. “Wow, you look awful.”

Putting her basket down beside her, Lysithea silently begins to examine Felix’s wounds. She can’t help but wonder what he’s been through these past three years.

“Can you hear me?” she asks. Felix gives a weak groan in response. That’s better than nothing.  
“I have water,” she says, taking a small flask from her satchel, “Drink.”

With her lift of the flask to his lips, he takes some water, swishing it around in his mouth to rinse the taste of blood. As he sips more, Lysithea starts using heal magic on some of his wounds. Felix manages to open his eyes and look up at her.

_It’s quite unbelievable that she’s here_ , he thinks to himself; it’s as if she appeared out of nowhere like an angel. Her white blonde hair is pulled back off her face into a neat bun and her cheeks are pink from the Guardian Moon’s unforgiving cold air. She wears a thick white cloak with brown fur to line it, the hood loosely draped over her head, her soft eyes busy sizing up the damage of his injuries as she heals.

“I can’t finish this here,” she says, her voice snapping him back to reality, “Your clothes are in the way and I have salves and bandages at my house. Can you walk?”

Any energy that had returned to Felix’s body in the past few minutes left him at just the thought of moving. Still, he manages to hoist himself up off the ground with Lysithea’s help, leaning against the tree to gather his strength as she busies herself calculating how to carry everything and support Felix at the same time.

Lysithea takes off her cloak and removes Felix’s sheath belt, fastening it across her chest instead of around her waist for a better fit. After sheathing his bloodstained sword, she covers herself in her cloak again and picks up her bag and basket, turning to Felix expectantly.

“Ready?” she asks, and he gives a reluctant nod. Lysithea takes his arm and wraps it around both her shoulders to support his weight.

“I’m stronger than I look,” she says, sensing his worries as he hesitantly leans on her, staining her cloak with his blood, “Let’s get going.”


	2. Chapter 2

The gentle sound of a guitar mixed with the sweet scent of baking and the warmth of the afternoon sun through a nearby window wakes Felix from the most comfortable sleep he’s had in years. Feeling the soft bed covers against his skin is a sensation that has long been foreign to him. For a moment he lies there, relishing this mellow moment, looking up at the wooden beams on the ceiling and rubbing sleep from his eyes. Rolling onto his side leans him onto one of his wounds, a sharp reminder of the events preceding his sleep – but he also remembers Lysithea’s pink cheeks, her pretty winter cloak, his blood staining her white clothes, and the perfect balance of worry and focus on her face as she examined his injuries.

With a wince, Felix pushes himself up on his achy muscles and looks out the window to scan his surroundings. A dirt path built by the work of busy feet and hooves connects to a narrow countryside path trailing far into the distant forest. In front of the forest he sees frosty green fields, rather barren in the season, though there are still scatters of dull flowers here and there fighting against the harsh winter.

He shifts his gaze down to his body, almost entirely bare under the bedsheets, apart from his underwear and plenty of bandaging. His skin is covered in cuts and scars of varying sizes and depths, some that have been on his body for years, many of them newer additions. Despite his soreness, Felix puts his hand on his stomach and runs his fingertips over the bandage wrapped around his torso. Underneath, he can feel the wound he thought would be the one to end him, and remembers the feeling of his blood draining – he has only sustained a handful of serious injuries in his life, and though by now he is far past numb to bloodshed, looking down at it was particularly unbearable. It has now been sutured shut.

“You’re awake,” Lysithea says as the door creaks open, “I didn’t expect you to wake yet.”

Closing the door behind her, she looks him over. His hair is thick and overgrown, and his face is rugged, cheeks sinking into his skull. A cut sits on the right side of his bottom lip. Even though he has become thinner than before he has also grown broader, his shoulders wide but his arms and hands veiny. Still, he already looks healthier than when she found him in the forest on the edge of death – upon recalling that image, Lysithea decides she probably should cut him some slack for looking so rough. In an odd way she can’t help but admire him, fighting her curiosity of how the past years have treated him.

“How long have I been sleeping?” Felix asks, sweeping his bed hair into a knot on the back of his head to keep all but the shortest, most annoying strands from falling on his face.

“Only two days. I was just coming in to change the dressing on your arm.” Felix looks at the neat bandage on his forearm, his blood beginning to mark its’ outermost layer. He sits up properly as Lysithea takes a tentative seat on the side of the bed and starts fiddling through her bandage kit in her lap.

“You saved my life,” Felix says, watching her busy hands in the kit, not able to look her in the eye.

“I know,” she replies, tucking her hair behind her ear, “You’re welcome.”

Felix is quiet while Lysithea applies the healing salve to the cut on his forearm and gently wraps it back up in fresh bandage. Usually he’s quiet because he doesn’t have anything he wishes to say, but in this moment, there’s so much swirling in his mind that he can’t find the right words for her. Looking at her – her head down, focused on wrapping the bandage – makes his head spin. It’s in this moment he realises how much he’s missed her, how beautiful she looks in this long-sleeve baby blue dress with her white hair flowing down her shoulders, how much he wishes he’d stayed by her side after the war, how much time he’s wasted chasing blades these past three years.

“Thank you,” he manages as she fastens the bandage with a small smile, giving a gentle pat on the closing tape before packing her kit away again. “Where are we?”

“The closest thing I could get in Fódlan to the middle of nowhere,” she replies, admiring the peaceful surroundings through the window, “We’re about a forty-minute ride from the outskirts of Daphnel. I live here with my parents.”

“Your parents?”

“When everything settled after the war, we decided as a family that we’d like to spend the rest of our years somewhere quaint, in our own little world,” she explains. “I love it here. We have two horses, and cats that live around here that we take care of and play with. And we aren’t too far out of Daphnel to go every so often to buy those supplies we don’t need all the time, like meat and other food we can store, or more thread for Mother’s sewing, or new supplies for handywork jobs that we need. Oh, and there’s this wonderful bakery not too far from the music shop my father visits to pick up new strings for his guitar, and they just have the best small cakes there!” she says excitedly, shooting a million words a minute, looking up at Felix with that old sparkle in her eyes as he smiles back down at her. That smile is a sight for sore eyes. A smile she knows is reserved for only her.

“I’m glad you’re so happy,” Felix says, only after admiring Lysithea for a slight bit too long. Then it hits him. Until now, the reason why she made this decision had entirely slipped his mind. It is year 1189 – her time is running out. The smile on his face drops suddenly, Lysithea’s expression dropping with his.

“What’s wrong?”

“You…” Felix looks down at his hands, which at some point were taken by Lysithea’s hands, held one on top of the other in his lap. Noticing makes his heart beat twice as fast as before. Noticing makes her retract her hands.

“It’s okay,” she says, finally. “I’ve always known it was coming, and I’m proud of everything I was able to achieve while—”

“Lysithea!” A man’s voice calls from the other room, “I think your cake is done!”

“I’m coming Father!” she responds, and promptly hops off the bed, giving Felix a smile, a quiet sadness sitting behind her eyes.

“I’ll come in again later to check on you. You still can’t leave that bed yet,” she nags, not facing him, “There’s some books in the drawer of the bedside cabinet – they’re mostly magic studies, but if you go in the drawer I assume you’re already bored enough that you want to read anyway. You better not get up!”

“You’re making a cake?” Felix asks.

Holding the door handle, Lysithea looks over her shoulder back at him and raises her eyebrows, her mischievous sweet-craving glint in her eyes once again.

“You wanna try a slice?”


	3. Chapter 3

Felix has read through _The Sixty-Five Formulas of Casting Excalibur and All Intended Uses_ three times in the past four days. He has also begun naming the different cats that come and sit on the shelf outside the window. So far, there’s Ginger, Marble, and Lucy. This morning, it seemed that he was genuinely able to communicate with Marble through eye contact alone. At some point, his muscles stopped aching from overexertion and started aching out of pure itch of getting moving again. Today is his last day confined to this bed, by Lysithea’s rules. He dare not challenge her.

“Good evening,” Lysithea comes in, pushing the door open with her back, carrying a promisingly full looking tray in with her.

“You really should knock before you come in the room,” Felix teases as she props the tray on his lap, “You never know what I could be up to in here.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” she taunts back, scooting butt-first over the end of the frame to sit cross-legged on top of the covers between his feet, “I know you’ve found it frustrating being stuck in the bed, but you really couldn’t move or else you would have damaged yourself even more and it would have all been for nothing.”

“I know,” he says, “Thank you. I mean it. I would have died if you hadn’t come along.”

“I know,” Lysithea lays out cutlery and organises the plates around for the two of them. A hearty plate packed with expensive cuts of steak, piles of potatoes and stacks of different greens. “Did you expect me to just leave you there?”

“What I mean to say is,” he huffs, “I feel really lucky that you happened to be there. To be honest, I didn’t even know where in Fódlan I was.”

“Well, you’re welcome,” Lysithea says, cutting into her steak, “I’m really glad that I was around then. I’m really glad that I found you.”

A moment of silence passes filled only with the sounds of knives and forks hitting their plates and an owl hooting outside. _Think of something, think of something, think of something,_ Felix thinks to himself.

“Uh… this is a good cut of steak,” he manages. _The food? You want to talk about the food? Really?!_

“Yeah, it’s good,” Lysithea says, cheeks full, “My father picked it up at the butchers out in town.”

“Where are your parents tonight?” He asks.

“I think they’ve gone to town to watch a show with some friends or something. They’ll be back tomorrow night or the morning after. Oh, you actually haven’t met them yet, have you?” She asks, looking up with her fork between her lips. “They’re very easy to talk to, so no need to worry. When my mother saw me coming up the path with you, she leapt up so fast to help me bring you inside.”

“I’m sorry you had to drag me all the way here,” he says, a pang of guilt in his stomach, his appetite already starting to slip away. “It’s not your responsibility to take care of me. You shouldn’t be wasting your time on me.”

“Hey, if you’re gonna be here, you’ve gotta stop apologising to me,” she says, polishing off her vegetables, not looking like she enjoyed them very much. “We’re cool. It’s good to see you. I have been wondering about you since everything ended. You’re the only one that didn’t really, you know, go into anything… solid. You kinda just left.”

“Yeah,” Felix scoffs, pushing his peas around with his fork, “I… wanted to be alone for a while.”

“Mhm, and how’s that working out for you?” Lysithea teases, glancing down at his bandaged torso with an eyebrow raise and her familiar judgemental glint.

“Look, you wouldn’t understand, okay?” Felix snaps, dropping his knife and fork down on the plate, his eyebrows furrowed, starting to recall why he decided to leave everyone in the first place. He can’t stand being read like this, and they all do it to him. Lysithea looks a little hurt by his snap at her, and seeing her slight grimace makes him realise he has no need to be so guarded with her – at least when no one else is around. He sighs and leans back on the wooden frame, putting a hand over his eyes and rubbing his temples with his thumb and finger.

“I defected to the Alliance because I could see there was no chance for Faerghus. By the time we met with them at Gronder, Ingrid and my father were already dead. I saw the prince go down – I was so close I heard him. I would have killed him myself if I had the chance.”

Felix looks back down at Lysithea – her eyes changed entirely, sad and full of pity – as the two hold a short moment of silence. “I don’t know if Sylvain managed to survive, but if he did, I know he’d never want to hear from me now.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“I’m a traitor. I left everything I knew because I didn’t want to die in this war. Now I wish I had just let it happen.”

Lysithea puts her fork down – she’d been holding it without moving since he’d been talking anyway – and lifts the tray from Felix’s lap and puts it on the floor.

“Your life is precious,” she says after a deep breath, scooting closer into the gap between his legs, the heaviness of her heart evident in every word she says, “It’s the only life you’re gonna get. We only have so much time here in the world, and then we’re gone. You can’t just wish that away,” she says. Felix feels the weight of the whole room on his shoulders.

“Stop avoiding my eyes,” she says, and he looks down to make eye contact with her, causing a skip in both their hearts and a warmth in their chests. Felix feels like he’s being scolded, but he knows he’s in no place to talk to her about the value of life, so he decides to suffer through the conversation rather than closing it off like he’s done with everyone else before.

When he looks into her eyes, Lysithea doesn’t know what to say. Her heart aches knowing that Felix had been suffering all this time, and after all that he’d achieved, he’d spent his years picking any fight on his way through Fódlan in the hope he’d find someone strong enough to finish him off.

Lysithea feels as if the air in the room grows thicker every time she breathes. An ache builds in her throat as she forces herself to not cry – not here, not now, and not in front of him. She can see the lack of hope in Felix’s eyes as his false scowl loosens. His eyes now look so pained and defeated, in place of where she once saw a certain strength and discipline that she was always so enchanted by.

The two have so much they want to say to each other, but they hold everything back in fear of overstepping a line, choosing the wrong words, or revealing too much of themselves. Tears well up in Felix’s eyes before they reach Lysithea’s. He turns quickly to look through the window at the emptiness of the sky, but he finds his eyes instead catch the light of the moon and its shine in the darkness. A single tear falls down his left cheek as he tightens his jaw to reign them in.

On instinct, Lysithea reaches out to wipe his tear with her thumb, and he flinches slightly out of surprise of her touch. She is certain to not linger on his skin, despite how much she wants to, and pulls her hand back as Felix turns to look back at her. Before she can bring her arm back to herself, he reaches for it and curls his hand around her, his thumb on the small of her wrist. Together, they put their arms down, twisting to hold their hands properly. The back of Felix’s hand rests on top of his thigh, her fingers curled around his palm, his thumb giving a gentle stroke to the back of her hand as he looks down at them – her small hand fits so perfectly in his. Felix raises his gaze slightly, unnerved in his vulnerability, as Lysithea tilts her head subconsciously while trying to read him.

“Felix…” she finally says, an unfamiliar kind of sadness in her tone. Upon hearing her voice, Felix automatically releases all the tension he held in his body and sinks further into his lean on the bed frame.

“You should get some sleep. It’s late now,” Lysithea says, sliding her hand out of his, “Tomorrow is a big day.”

“We’ll get you up again and you can come out in the garden with me.” He can feel her smile without looking up at her face. That sorry smile he’s seen from so many people through his life, many of them that he will never see again. She hooks her legs over his and hops off the side of the bed, crouching down to pick up the tray to take out with her.

“Thank you for the dinner,” he says, lifting his head after she turns her back on him, “It was nice.”

After opening the door, she turns around to smile at him, the backlight from the candles in the kitchen lighting up around her frame. “You’re welcome. Goodnight, Felix. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight.”


	4. Chapter 4

Year 1186, Blue Sea Moon

It was an uncomfortably warm summer night at Garreg Mach. Especially uncomfortable for two boys who had grown up in Faerghus, where a chill haunts the furthest corners of the territory even in the deepest summer months.

Felix and Ashe sat on the edge of the bridge leading into the cathedral under the starry blue sky, their legs dangling over the side. Felix liked how the night sky was always a little lighter during the summer months further south. It somehow made the humidity more tolerable.

Ashe had joined the Alliance forces some months ago, after he was defeated with House Rowe’s pathetic forces at Ailell. Claude, compassionate and charming as ever, managed to reason with Ashe, as it was evident his motives for being there had spiralled from his grief for Lord Lonato being twisted by House Rowe so that they could use him to their advantage. Ashe was quick to come around to the Alliance’s view due to his dependable, chivalrous nature and his boyish dreams of a better world – his decision was also probably hastened by discovering that Felix was with them.

Their reunion was awkward at first, as Ashe was always loyal to the Kingdom and found it hard to understand Felix’s reasons for defecting. After a while, he’d decided that he had no time to be on the fence about it, and forgave him – easily, as Ashe always did – because he was just grateful to be beside someone who felt like home again.

Not that Felix felt that he needed forgiveness for wanting to fight for the winning side rather than sticking with a lost cause and dying for _his duty_.

“Those Who Slither in the Dark,” Ashe said, while fletching his broken arrows, “Agarthans. Shambhala. Huh. Sounds like something out of a legend.”

“Ugh,” Felix grunted in response, looking at the ground far, far below his hanging feet, “Please don’t.”

“Sorry,” Ashe said with a bashful laugh, “I’m just wondering what it’ll be like down there. It’s just so…”

“Unreal,” Felix finished for him.

Strained as their relationship was, he appreciated having Ashe with him during the war, having a partner to share the lighter summer night skies with – even if just to sit together in silence as he pondered what it might feel like to fall from the bridge and land on the ground.

Another moment of silence passed between the two of them before Ashe broke it.

“I’m getting to the point where nothing feels real anymore,” he said. Felix turned his head to look at him, saying nothing in response, but placing his hand on the back of his neck and rubbing the bottom of his hair in comfort. Ashe did not look away from his arrows to meet his eyes.

“There is so much I didn’t get to do,” he continued, “So many things I didn’t get to say.”

“Me too,” Felix agreed under his breath, trying to remember his last encounters with their friends who – he had decided for himself – had all lost sight of the truth, blinded by loyalty and duty.

The last time he had seen Dimitri was as he died a worthless death at Gronder Field, massively overwhelmed as the Kingdom got caught in the middle of the Imperial and Alliance forces. Felix lost him as his body was trampled by soldiers just like he was any other person. He hadn’t caught sight of the others there, but he could only assume they all perished at that gruesome battle since the Kingdom fell silent after it.

Everything, everyone he had known to be home – gone in a blink. For nothing.

Ashe interrupted Felix’s silent train of thought once more.

“I loved her,” he said, his voice quieter than before, faltering at the end. He breathed in as if he wanted to say more, but he stopped himself. His freckled hands shook as he wrapped the fletching around the end of an arrow.

“I know,” Felix said. Everyone knew that Ashe loved Ingrid, and she loved him too. Ashe didn’t tell him what had become of them, only that the war effort had torn them away from each other in the Kingdom. He had never known Ingrid to be so real with someone like the way she was with Ashe – he truly understood her in ways that even Dimitri, Sylvain and Felix himself couldn’t.

Reflecting on the bond they held between them had Felix contemplating old feelings of his own. Feelings that the war did not allow time for.

Suddenly, Ashe let out a heavy exhale as he reached for his quiver, returning the final repaired arrow to it. He got up from sitting with Felix, put a hand on his shoulder momentarily, and then turned back towards the monastery.

“You’ve done well, Ashe,” Felix said to him, not looking at him as he left. He heard Ashe stop in his tracks and linger for a moment, before releasing another sigh – to himself this time; quieter, softer, bluer – and walking away again.

As Ashe walked further away, Felix leaned back on his palms and tilted his head as he looked down more intently at the ground beneath the bridge. The lack of wind in the summer night increased his curiosity of what it might feel like to be falling through the air, lighter than a feather, until he’d land on the ground. He wondered if he would know when he’d hit the ground, or whether it would kill him so fast that it would be over before he could process feeling its’ impact.

He found himself having these thoughts much more often ever since he’d realised this war would not end simply by crushing the Kingdom and the Empire. Every time he thought the job was done an even greater, stronger foe would make itself known. Felix wondered how long it would take until there was a foe that was too great for him.

Snapped out of his thoughts by the hoot of an owl, he switched his position and leaned into the side of the bridge’s barrier he had been sat between, pulling one knee to his chest and wrapping his arms around it, his other leg still hanging from the bridge. He did not spend long looking across the distance before shutting his eyes.

Alone in the quiet like this, Felix was sure that if he was to fall from the bridge, no one would notice or care for his absence.

Light, busy footsteps grew closer from the cathedral, and Felix’s thoughts were again interrupted.

“That’s no place to fall asleep,” Lysithea said from behind him, stood with many books stacked in her arms, her white hair almost glowing in the moonlight.

It had been nine days since Lysithea had revealed the truth to everyone of her past experiences at the hands of those that resided in Shambhala, and the consequences she suffered for it. Though, Felix hadn’t heard it from her directly since their positions in the army were far apart and they rarely got to see each other.

On days where they did have a chance to speak, Felix found himself feeling a little fuller and realer. A warmth would grow in his chest whenever he’d see her weaving her way through soldiers much taller than her, and it would only spread further when she’d stop in her tracks to speak to him – which she always did, even if it was brief.

But since learning the terrible truth of Lysithea being cursed to live a shortened life, even when she had so much ambition and so much to give to the world, Felix’s guilt and self-hatred would eat through him at just the thought of her.

How could he so casually contemplate falling from the bridge when he now knew that she would give anything to live, even just a little bit longer?

How dare he be so nonchalant when on the receiving end of a wound slightly too terrible in battle, now knowing that she had carried this burden and still risked her life in this war?

How could someone so precious be condemned to such a fate?

It was as if his punishment for being so curious of death was to take away one of his final grips to life – those glowing eyes, those small hands, those pale pink lips that he’d give anything to know the feel of against his own.

It was selfish of him to fear death while also wanting it, knowing that she must have lived every day of her life with the weight of her own on her shoulders.

Lysithea put her books in a pile on the bridge and sat on them, behind Felix.

“Are you okay?” She asked.

Shame welled in Felix’s throat and he swallowed through its constriction as he answered. 

“Yeah,” he lied, looking over his shoulder to see her looking at him, holding her face in her hands, “I’m okay.”

He shifted himself around on his palms and hooked his legs over the edge of the bridge to sit cross-legged, facing her, still sitting on her stacked books. Their eyes met at the same level, and she squinted for a moment as she analysed his dour expression and bit her lip before she spoke again.

“I can’t help but feel that you’ve been avoiding me recently,” she said as she leant towards him, “I mean, we usually end up bumping into each other in the reception hall when I’m on my way to meet with my battalion.”

Felix felt a pang of guilt in his stomach thinking on the recent instances where he’d see the top of her head in the crowd and divert his path away from her own. His body visibly stiffened and he opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t seem to find the words he wanted to say. Lysithea gave him a small, saddened smile.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. This war is… tough, huh?” She prompted him with kind eyes, and Felix felt both thankful and a bit sheepish as she cast the topic aside upon seeing his reaction. Not wanting to acknowledge the war at all, he sat on his hands as he looked for something else to talk about.

“What have you got so many books for?” He asked her, eyeing the seat she had made from the thick, weathered tomes.

“Oh,” she said with a somewhat despondent exhale, “I’ve been tasked with researching any particular magic that might be more effective against… the enemy.”

“They keep books in the cathedral?”

“Apparently so. Seteth let me know of a hidden hatch in the statues room where the church has been stockpiling banned records. They concealed it with _a spell_ , just for extra precaution,” she explained with a smirk as she rocked back and forward in her seat.

Felix, knowing how Lysithea gets spooked so easily – something she had never admitted to him, even though it was painfully obvious – admired that she managed to go through an eerie hatch in the cathedral by herself. In the dark, no less.

“Hmph,” he scoffed, “Looks like uncovering the church’s weird secrets ended up useful in the end.”

“I hope so,” Lysithea said, sounding rather pensive in her tone. Felix guessed she was concerned about wasting her time on research that could prove fruitless.

“Do you need any help carrying them?” He offered quickly, in hopes to distract her from brooding, and Lysithea leaned back into herself, tapping the books with her fingertips.

“No,” she responded with a shake of her head, “I’m alright with it, thanks.”

Felix nodded and stood up from his spot, about to make his way to his room when Lysithea quickly stood up too.

“But,” she began, “Um…”

He raised his eyebrows a little as she hesitated.

“It would be helpful if you could walk me back to my room,” she dragged out, “If you wanted to help me.”

“Well, if I walk you back to your room, why don’t I carry some of the books too?” Felix asked, finding that contradictory.

“I don’t need help with the books,” she insisted, “But…”

“You’re scared of the dark,” Felix said as if clueing her out, smiling at her, “I remember.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m all grown up now and I’m still scared,” she groaned sarcastically, turning around and lifting half of the books from the top of the pile.

“If you want to take some of the books so bad, then take them,” she huffed, holding them out towards him. Felix took them and Lysithea picked up the rest, and they made their way to her room on the far end of the monastery.

As they walked side by side, neither of them said anything. Felix appreciated how the top of Lysithea’s head reached just to his chin, and he imagined that holding her close to him would feel as if they fit together perfectly, as if they were cut for each other.

His thoughts drifted in the quiet and he wondered what she might look like under her layers – whether her soft skin and dainty body would secretly be as scarred and war torn as his own. He noticed she had a couple of long, faded scars travelling from her fingertips up her hands and wrists which must have been left after overcasting a variety of spells from her potent dark magic roster.

Felix caught himself taking hidden glances down at Lysithea as his curiosity continued to grow. As he looked at her cheeks, he wondered how squishy they might feel and how their shape might fit perfectly in his palms. As he looked at her nose, he wondered how far a blush would spread across her face if she were to become flustered. As he looked at her neck, he wondered what it might feel like to trail light kisses down it, and how she might react to his intimacy if they were ever to have that opportunity.

As they neared their destination, Felix became rather conscious of his silence and tried to work up some topics to talk about – but his brain was infuriatingly empty of words and instead full of his curiosity. How could she have such an impact on him?

Quicker than he would have liked, the two of them arrived at Lysithea’s room and she balanced her books on top of the ones he was carrying while she unlocked her door. He would have liked to bring the books into her room for her and set them on her desk or wherever she would like, but instead of inviting him in, she turned around while standing in the doorway, with her arms out.

“Thanks,” she said as Felix gently handed the stack of books over to her. On one arm he leaned on the wall at the side of her door.

“Goodnight, Felix,” she said, peering over the mountain of books in her arms.

Lysithea was just turning around to head into her room as Felix finally plucked up a smidgen of courage.

“Hey, Lysithea,” he quickly blurted. He wanted to tell her that seeing her brings him joy, that she truly brightens his day, that he cares for her, that he thinks of her often, that he wants to kiss her, that he thinks he might be in _love_ with her–

“If you need me, you can always come to me for help.”

Lysithea blinked in slight confusion at him over the books.

“Thank you, Felix,” she said with a nod, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he replied after she closed the door behind her.


	5. Chapter 5

Year 1189, Pegasus Moon

It’s a cold but bright morning, and Lysithea is up early as usual, hanging the laundry outside to dry in the sun. Feeling the cold ground on her bare feet sends chills through her body as she scuttles back into the house through the kitchen’s back door, making sure to leave a quick morning snack for the cats that hang out around the house.

On the inside of the door hangs the family calendar, and today is the first day of the Pegasus Moon – the month of Felix’s birthday, and her birthday eight days after his. Lysithea turns the page and stares at the last date pensively. It will be her twenty-fifth birthday. The last birthday she shall see, she is certain.

Tying her hair back with a white bow, she turns away from the calendar, rolls up her sleeves and gets started on the dishes from last night’s dinner.

Watching her hands as she washes, she can’t help but run through last night again and again in her head. Felix confided in her – cried in front of her, though begrudgingly – and didn’t close the conversation immediately out of his general hate for oversharing or, deep down, appearing vulnerable. Rethinking the moment he took her hand in his has her heart feeling like its growing too large to fit in her chest any longer. The tender touch of his thumb on the most sensitive spot of her wrist, her hand comfortably sitting in his as he stroked the back of her palm – she’s so foolishly flustered and feels like a schoolgirl, a feeling that she never had the time for when she deserved it.

A creaking door to her left breaks the quiet that was otherwise filled with only the squeaking of the cloth against a dish or a whistle of wind outside. Plate in hand, she turns her head as she speaks.

“Morning, sleepyhead–" she begins, cutting herself off at the sight of him.

Lysithea’s plate drops to the floor, shattering on impact the second she lays eyes on Felix standing in the door frame in his underwear, rubbing his eyes, his hair tied back in a bed-headed knot.

“What have you done with my clothes?” He asks, his voice husky from the morning, barely awake as he stands there.

“I– uh,” she stutters, wiping the shock off her face as she scrambles to gather the plate fragments, deciding to crouch now mostly to hide the rush on her cheeks, “I’ve been working on stitching your jacket and shirt but they’re not done yet, and I’ve still got some patches to sew onto your trousers.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Lysithea stands back up, bolting for the dustpan and brush after gathering the remnants of the plate into a neat pile, “Sorry.”

“So, do you have, like…” Felix starts, squinting as he leans on the door frame with his arms crossed, gradually waking up in the bright light through the kitchen window.

“Of course! Sorry,” Lysithea practically yelps, stumbling over her words and abandoning the dustpan as she takes off down the far corridor, “It slipped my mind to leave some clothes out for you. I’ll grab you some of my father’s old stuff, or… something… Yeah.”

Seeing her dart off – her hair and loose white dress swaying with her speed – is such a sight to behold first thing in the morning that Felix can’t help but smirk to himself. Admittedly, he could have gone about this another way, but after picking up on her quietly admiring his body at times when she thought he wouldn’t notice, there was no chance he’d let go of the opportunity to tease her.

Felix makes a stiff waddle over to the smashed plate on the floor. His aches are mostly gone, and his wounds are healing quickly – he puts the speed down to Lysithea’s homemade salves. She has removed some of his bandages already but the thickest remain, which she comes in to change at least once daily. Felix thinks it’s a bit much, but he still puts his trust in her for her better knowledge of medicine and healing. He also feels no need to question it because she’s always looked so cute when she’s focusing on something.

Shaking his head with a smile, he sweeps the pile of shattered plate pieces up, and brushes them into the waste bin in the corner of the room.

Soon enough, Lysithea returns to the kitchen, seemingly more collected than before, hovering at the end of the dining table with a bundle of clothes in her arms.

“I picked up a couple different things because nothing is going to fit perfect,” she explains, sifting through the items, “It’s all stuff that my father hasn’t gotten around to getting rid of yet. Most of it is too small for him now, but it still might be too big to fit you, but I’ll work on finishing the stitches on your clothes as soon as possible. I’m going to need to wash them too, though.” She rapid fires her words at him, clearly still flustered no matter how composed she manages to look on the surface.

Avoiding eye contact, she holds the clothes out in front of her, her other hand holding the top of the dining seat to her side. She lifts her eyes to meet his only when her gaze is obstructed by the exact thing she’s trying to avoid – his body – as Felix comes towards her, a little closer than was necessary, pushing her to retract her arm back in. Subconsciously, she finds her grip on the chair is somewhat tighter than before.

“Thanks,” he says after breaking their brief eye contact, out of fear of losing his cool. He takes the bundle from her in his two hands, causing them to brush over hers in the process. Still looking up at him, Lysithea takes a breath to speak, but words slip away from her in her slight daze.

Felix turns around and walks to the other end of the dining table, putting on an oversized white button-up shirt on as he goes, fastening it in the middle with only three buttons. Out of the bundle, he picks a pair of checked trousers which look to be the closest fit for him and swiftly puts them on. He can feel Lysithea watching him.

“I’ll just finish up these dishes and then make us some breakfast, okay?” She says, moving to the wash basin before Felix can lift his head up and catch her peeking.

“I’ll do the dishes,” he offers, making his way over to lean on the counter next to her, this time with a solid distance between them. He raises his eyebrows, eyes the plate she’d picked up, and looks back at her again. “We don’t want any more accidents to happen.”

“Uh, okay,” she says, pushing herself off the basin and twirling round to open the pantry, “I can make some breakfast while you do that then.”

“Felix?”

“Hm?”

“Thank you,” she chirps, poking her head out from behind the pantry door, looking back at him with her eyebrows raised and a cute awkward smile. “For doing the dishes.”

_Maybe I’ve landed in the right place,_ Felix thinks to himself with a smile as he scrubs a plate.


	6. Chapter 6

After spending some time reading a selection of blurbs from the large bookcase in the living room, Felix finds a book that takes his fancy: _Thunder’s Apprentice_ by Ashe Ubert – the first book in a series of four (and counting) that tells the tale of a stalwart female knight and her many heroic adventures in the Kings guard. Although he loathes stories and legends of valiant knights, Felix finds himself glued to the story with each word as he paces around Lysithea’s house, the leading character reminding him of someone he, and Ashe, once knew very well.

_Holy shit, Ashe,_ Felix thinks to himself. He was sure he had fallen at Shambhala.

_Where in the world could you be now?_

In the living room, Lysithea lays in an armchair, her legs hanging over its arm, as she works on stitching and patching Felix’s clothes. Every two or three hours, he brings her a cup of honeyed-fruit blend tea or a slice of her freshly baked cake and silently leaves it on the table by her side, his eyes fixed on the book. Upon seeing which book he’s holding, she decides to hold back on her teases for now, finding she’s smiling to herself after he leaves the room.

They spend most of the day like this, Felix occasionally sitting in her company for a little while before pacing again, the two of them enjoying the comfortable silence they have together as they focus on separate things. At midday they share a quick lunch together, the early afternoon sun beating through the kitchen window, and promptly go back to what they were doing before.

After some hours, Lysithea finally finishes patching Felix’s trousers and stitching his coat, though some more work still needs to be done on his shirt – which she _definitely_ didn’t leave until last on purpose.

Before she knows it, the sun begins to set, and it’s time to set out some dinner for the cats. Lysithea busies herself cooking up some fresh herring and takes extra care slicing it up into chunks small enough for little mouths. Setting the mountain of fish chunks aside, she flits between different rooms of the house to locate Felix on his pacing travels.

“Hey,” she says, poking her head round the spare bedroom’s door, finally finding him. He’s laying on the bed, propping his back up on the frame, with his knees up and the book in front of his face.

“Hey.”

“Wanna come feed the cats?”

Felix peeks his eyes up at her from behind the book. As he gets up, he props it face-down on the bed so not to close the page. It would be a shame to lose his spot so close to the end of the story.

In the garden, the pair crouch down with the seven or so cats that have gathered as they do this time every day. Lysithea puts the plate down and the cats scamper towards it.

“I know you don’t have to cook the fish,” she explains with a smile, after catching Felix’s teasing eyes, “But I think they enjoy it more if it’s been cooked.”

Felix laughs with a shake of his head as he pets a cat on its way to the fish – a black cat, one he had not seen while stuck in bed, and therefore he had not named.

“Do they have names?” He asks.

“Names?” Lysithea throws his question back with a giggle.

“Well, it might be nice for them to have names,” he explains, a little flustered after unintentionally making her laugh, though as per usual, he manages to hide it with his cool tone.

“Let’s name them together, then.”

Felix looks up at her with an eyebrow raise before falling to sit on the ground with his arms resting on his knees, getting comfortable as he starts examining each cat and their individual vibes so to choose the best names for them. Though he sees some that he already is sure of.

“This one is Lucy,” he points to a white cat with brown patches, the smallest of the group, before moving his point to a plumper orange cat, “And this one is Ginger.”

Lysithea smiles as she shifts to sit cross-legged and scoots closer beside him. A calico cat that had just finished eating soon curled up in her lap, eyes dozy under her soft head scratches after filling up on delicious fish.

“What about this one?”

“Well,” Felix says, the black cat walking between his legs, looking for some love after getting its fair share of the fish bounty, “You have to name some of them too.”

“Okay,” Lysithea says with a small laugh, looking down at the cat while coming to a decision, “This one shall be called Albert.”

“Albert?” Felix says with a puzzled expression.

“Albert.”

“Why would you name a cat Albert?”

“Well, why not?” Lysithea defends herself, eyebrows furrowed, “He just looks like an Albert.”

“How do you know it’s a boy?”

“How do you know Lucy is a girl?”

Felix pulls a face while calculating a good comeback before deciding resistance is futile.

“Albert,” he says with a nod in agreement. The pair laugh together.

While he’s busy attending to the little black cat, a familiar tortoiseshell cat comes to Felix’s side, tapping his paw against his leg in search for some head rubs. When Felix looks down at it, he feels the cat peering into his soul. It’s as if they’re talking to each other with their eyes. He knows this one too.

“Marble,” Lysithea says.

“Woah,” Felix lets out.

_This is weird,_ he thinks to himself as he reluctantly pets Marble, feeling his familiar stare. He can’t quite work out if he is a cat whisperer, or if Marble is a human whisperer – either way, he decides these thoughts are better left in his head for the time being.

“What?”

“Oh,” he says with an awkward, breathy laugh, “It’s nothing.”

Not before long, the cats polish up the last of the fish and begin setting back off into the wilderness after getting some more love from Lysithea and Felix. Lysithea stands first, holding her hands out to help Felix up off the ground. When he looks up at her and takes her hands, her heart skips a beat.

_I don’t have time for this,_ she thinks to herself.

_I need to know if he feels the way I do._

The sky has grown purple with the setting sun, and the two of them stand there facing each other, accompanied only by the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind. Lysithea just about sums up the courage to try to say what she feels, but Felix gets there first.

“So,” he starts, “When do you think I’ll be well enough to leave?”

“Um,” Lysithea responds after a moment, her heart sinking in her chest, “Well–“

“I just don’t want to keep causing you and your family hassle.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says, disheartened, looking down and fiddling with the sleeves of her dress, “I’d say maybe a week or two more. Maybe three.”

“Oh,” Felix says, “Okay.”

“I’m gonna go inside and wash up,” Lysithea says, crouching to pick the plate up off the ground.

“I think I’ll stay out here a while longer.”

Hearing the back door shut behind him, Felix lets out a heavy sigh as he looks across the grassy field in front of him with his hands on his hips. After spending the last however many years feeling chained to living, finding a place where he is so at peace but so guilty for being there is a whole new way to hate himself. He is past accepting he can never be happy. He doesn’t deserve this – doesn’t deserve her – after he’s spent his time taking life after life, when all he wanted was to be free of his own.

Felix shuts his eyes and breathes in the cold winter air as he analyses the thoughts in his head. Having always been someone who knows only his head over his heart, he can’t help but feel the latter is tugging a lot harder this time. With every final line he draws for himself to leave Lysithea and go back to roaming the country with his sword, he can’t ignore the voice of his heart in the back of his mind: _but,_ it rings, _what if there’s a chance?_


	7. Chapter 7

Lysithea finds herself scrubbing each dish a little more vigorously than usual tonight.

If she doesn’t say anything, Felix will never know, but what if he feels the same and she loses him?

If she does say something, and Felix feels the need to take pity on her, who is she to guilt him into staying by her side as she dies, after only a chance meeting in the forest?

If she does say something, and Felix feels the same, who is she to force him to love her knowing she won’t be here much longer?

_But,_ her loudest thought rings, _who am I to fear any of these embarrassments, when I have such little time left for embarrassment to be worth anything?_

Even before the war started, Lysithea was far too occupied with her studies to even want to know what her feelings for Felix were. She observed all her peers to try and learn from them, but the way she admired Felix was different to how she admired anyone else.

When they were young, she often visited the training grounds in hopes that he’d be there and she could see him hard at work, his hair falling out of place, his eyes determined and his breath heavy. Memories of catching him in those moments would replay behind her eyelids until she fell asleep.

During the war when sleep was more stubborn, she’d often settle herself by wondering what it would be like to be held by him, what his hands might feel like on her skin, whether he had held anyone so closely before.

In the past week or so since finding him, she finds these thoughts torment her so much more than before.

Lysithea throws the washing rag into the basin and dries her hands as she looks through the window at Felix, standing with his hands on his hips, overlooking the field at the back of the house. Her heart pounds in her chest in a way that is so foreign to her – nothing like the beat before a battle, the beat before killing. Ears ringing, she forces herself back out into the garden.

“Felix?” She calls, holding her hands together, her heart in her throat.

Hearing her call, Felix turns around – his pale skin lit by the sunset, his hair and loose shirt blowing in the wind.

“Hm?”

_Deep breath, Lysithea._

“Are you okay?”

She begins walking towards him.

“I am going to ask you a question, and you need to reply to me in complete honesty.”

Felix smirks.

“What’s up?”

“You really have to tell me the truth, okay?”

“I will.”

As she comes closer, Felix furrows his brow as he sees a stress on her face he’s never seen before. Lysithea can barely meet his eyes.

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

“Would it be selfish of me,” she says in a small voice, stood right in front of him now, eyes on his chest, “To ask you to stay by my side for the rest of my life?”

The joy and relief that shoots through Felix upon hearing her words makes him want to sprint straight into the centre of the field and yell at the top of his lungs until he runs out of air. The old warmth that used to trickle across his chest when he’d bump into her at the monastery reignites and he feels it rush through his whole body. His heart swells faster than ever before and he can feel the automatic dumbfounded expression upon his face.

“Lysithea,” he says, as he manages to contain his urge to run off and shout, “I don’t… want to be a burden.” Before he allows himself to fall into the moment, he finds himself needing that extra reassurance to entirely erase even the smallest slithers of doubt he has built for himself his whole life.

“I want you to stay by my side for the rest of my life,” she declares, looking him in the eyes, cautious and curious. Felix cups her clasped hands with his own.

“Then I will stay.”

“But do you _want_ to stay?”

He smiles.

Something about Lysithea had always caught Felix’s attention – he admired her dedication, especially as she was a fair bit younger than most others.

As they progressed through their years at Garreg Mach he watched as she grew into herself, and his admiration for her grew too, spiralling into something different to appreciating a peer’s work ethic and dedication. His chest would get warmer whenever they’d speak, and he found himself wanting to protect her, knowing she could handle herself very well. He was interested in her wellbeing and was always ready to jump in if she needed help – again, not that she ever did.

Even back then he knew he had a crush, but there was no way in hell it would ever leave the confinement of his own mind. Since he could never make logical sense of his feelings, he decided the easiest way to deal with the hassle was simply to bury it.

During the war when she revealed the truth about her crests – and consequently, her limited lifespan – his heart ached in a new way whenever he saw her. He grew reluctant to ask after her in fear of seeming overbearing or intrusive, and even as the war effort mostly kept them apart, he never forgot the way she opened up something new in him.

“I think,” he says with such warmth in the chill of the wind, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks as he moves his hands to her forearms, his thumbs gently rubbing her skin, “I think I have loved you for a long time. I think I have loved you since I first got to know you, and… I think I wanted you to love me, too.”

Lysithea’s eyes grow full of love as the feelings she suppressed within herself for years finally flow through her. Slowly, she wraps her arms around Felix’s waist, and he moves his hold to her upper arms, his thumbs still giving her small caresses – their bodies together, hearts beating against each other.

“So, yes, I would like to stay.”

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

“I have another question.”

Felix raises his eyebrows. Subconsciously, she fiddles with the fabric on the back of his shirt.

“Will you kiss me?”

Her eyes shine up at him and her fair skin glows in the dim light of the purple sky. Felix’s head tilts out of endearment on instinct as his eyes flicker to her lips and back up again. Breathing out, he takes her face in his hands, the tips of his long fingers slinking round onto the back of her neck and into her hair. Though his touch is soft, his skin is rough and chapped from endless years of battle – and it feels so right against the sensitive skin on her jawline and cheeks. Her arms tighten around his waist and the two breathe in perfect sync, connecting perfectly together.

Lysithea has never kissed anyone before. She’d never had the time to even think about what it would be like, apart from when she was falling asleep, and she’d only ever think of Felix. She used to wonder if he had the same thoughts as her. Now, looking up at the unfamiliar affection in his brown eyes as he holds her face so tenderly in his hands, she thinks that sometimes – even just for two minutes – he must have thought about her before falling asleep, too.

Felix has never kissed anyone before. It’s not that he was never interested, but more important things tended to be on his mind, and he always got a vivid image of Sylvain’s experiences no matter how much he tried to block his vulgar words out. Back in the war, he sometimes wondered what would have happened if he had tried to tell Lysithea how he felt before they’d lost all time for menial things like that. The fact he can barely contain his joy in this moment – _her_ asking _him_ to kiss her – proves he always was lying to himself that he’d buried his crush.

He doesn’t know if Lysithea’s cheeks are so pink from the wind, her question, his touch, or a mix of it all. Tearing his gaze away from the lights in her eyes, he looks down at her lips once more before closing his eyes and leaning into her.

Lysithea tiptoes up into Felix’s kiss and feels herself melt into him even deeper. For someone so scarred and callous, his lips are so gentle and soft against hers. She had half expected herself to freeze up the moment their lips met, but she is relaxed, as if time has been leading her to this – if anything, Felix is stiffer, but she feels him relax in her arms.

They break their parted lips from each other and linger closely for a moment, their chests falling and rising together, his forehead pressed against hers. Lysithea opens her eyes to see Felix’s are still shut, feeling his eyelashes on her skin and his breath on her face in the shape of his small smile as he suddenly pulls her lips to meet his again. The surprise pushes a tiny squeal out of her, and when she feels him laugh into their kiss, she could swear she sees stars. 

The two finally separate and Lysithea puts her hands over Felix’s on her face, hooking her thumbs between his fingers. The light in his eyes from the moonlight as he smiles down at her is different to anything she had ever seen in him, and she knows within herself that he has never felt this feeling before – a feeling of a flawless connection, the final ignition of a spark which had fallen dormant many moons ago. Yet, Lysithea can’t shake the smaller feeling of guilt inside her.

“I know that I don’t have as much time here as you do,” she starts, Felix quickly shushing her in response, “But I promise to love you with everything in me for every day I will live.”

Heart aching in his chest, Felix kisses her forehead. As she looks up at him with numb sorrow behind her eyes, he tucks her under his chin and holds her to him, one hand stroking her head, his other arm wrapped around her tiny shoulders. He wishes he could just absorb her into him, lock her in his heart, and keep her safe there forever.

“I will love you for the rest of my days, Lysithea.”

Lysithea is soothed by his embrace and the sound of his heartbeat as she tries her hardest to stop tears from welling up in her eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

Lysithea is not one for late nights, and much prefers to get to bed early, so that she can wake up well in the morning and always make the most of her day.

Today was the first day of her life that she had been awake for the sunrise having not slept a wink before it.

All night, she stayed up with Felix talking and kissing, and then talking, and then kissing. Their game of asking a question and answering in full honesty carried on after they went back inside and continued all through the night.

Felix and Lysithea, both being straight-forward with their words and generally practical thinkers, were quite fond of this game. It was time efficient and, more importantly, was an immediate way to fill the holes their curiosity of each other had burned away in them through the years.

When they came in from the garden, the two of them lit the fireplace and a couple of candles before settling on the sofa together in the dim living room, Lysithea sitting cross-legged in between Felix’s legs as he leaned back into the sofa’s arm.

It was a good and comfortable position, she thought, because she could play with his hands between the two of them, twirling her fingers around his and touching her fingertips to his own, sometimes bringing them to her lips to kiss them. Sat like this, she could easily lean into him, taking his face in her hands and kissing his nose, his cheeks, between his eyebrows, or his lips whenever she wanted to, and he did not protest. He quickly learnt that he very much liked being kissed by her.

Felix liked sitting like that, but he liked it more when Lysithea turned around and leaned back into him as he closed his arms around her. In that position, he could smell the cleanliness of her hair and clothes so closely and could lean down to kiss the top of her head. He could wind the ends of her soft white hair around his fingers and link one of his legs around hers to pull her even closer into him. The closer they could be the safer he could keep her, he thought, and maybe if he silently wishes hard enough, he might succeed in protecting her within himself; a tenacious, stormy fortress with the world’s most precious gem hidden inside, locking her in his heart and keeping her there until all his days are gone.

Lysithea liked that position too, because feeling the rumble of Felix’s voice in her back when he spoke and the rise and fall of his breath in his chest made her feel safe and cherished. When he held his hands together across her stomach, she could pull the sleeves of his loose white shirt up and run her fingers across his scarred arms, mindlessly drawing circles on his skin as the two of them talked.

Eventually, Felix had sunk to lay down properly on the sofa, bending his legs so that his feet didn’t hang over the end. Lysithea rested between his legs on her side, her head on his chest and her knees curled together under his thigh. The steady beat of his heart and his fingertips stroking through her hair quickly lulled her off to sleep, despite how much she wanted to stay awake with him. It was okay, because she knew that he would still be right there underneath her when she woke up.

It didn’t take long for Felix to fall asleep after her as the morning sun shone through the window and the fire burnt out.

The two sleep peacefully together until a jangle in the front doors’ keyhole wakes them both.

All of a sudden, Lysithea’s father clambers through the front door, breathing laboriously as he struggles to carry two hardcase trunks under his arms. Her mother follows behind him, her lilting voice bouncing off the walls before she even gets inside.

“Lysithea!” She calls, “Would you please come help your father bring in these darned trunks?!”

Pushing herself up from Felix’s chest, Lysithea pokes her head over the back of the sofa to look at her parents in the doorway, wide-eyed and startled.

“Oh, goodness, what are you doing? It’s the middle of the afternoon! Why are you sleeping on the–“

Her mother cuts her speech immediately when a barely awake Felix absentmindedly pushes himself up on his arms, blinking and squinting over the back of the sofa at the sight of her parents. Her father, having just turned round after catching his breath, gasps sharply and clears his throat when he catches sight of his daughter and her new friend, his eyes practically popping out of his head as he waves a hand to his wife in abandonment and takes off down the corridor.

Lysithea’s mother passes through a cycle of different facial expressions as she scrambles for words to no avail.

“Mother,” Lysithea says, breathless in her embarrassment, “We, uh…”

Lysithea pushes Felix back down and lightly slaps his cheeks repeatedly in attempt to coax him into full consciousness. Grabbing at her wrists and batting her hands away, he groans as he rubs his temples and runs a hand through his hair.

“How was the show?” She asks through gritted teeth as she throws a quick glare down to Felix, scampering out of their snuggle and tying back her unkempt hair with a white bow.

Her mother still stands with her jaw hanging and a glaze over her eyes, mind completely barren of words and ridden with surprise. Lysithea tries desperately to signal to her with eyebrow raises, but she had always been hopeless on picking up on things like that.

“It, uh, yes…” her mother trailed, “Yes… the show… it was… magnificent…”

She signals with her hands as she walks backwards, words spilling painfully slowly from her as she backs towards her bedroom.

“It was a long journey, Lysithea, that’s why I must go and… freshen up… do forgive me, Felix… I’ll be back… shortly.”

“Yes! Of course!” Lysithea stutters, putting a hand over Felix’s mouth before he can respond himself.

The bedroom door closes and Lysithea is left bent over a half-asleep gremlin, covering his mouth as she stares in befuddlement at the abandoned trunks by the open front door. She can feel his grin under her palm.

“They seem nice,” Felix teases through his smirk after Lysithea removes her hand from his mouth.

“Oh, shut up, you demon,” she hisses as she stands, scurrying towards her parents’ trunks.

Felix pushes himself up again and throws his arms up in surrender as he laughs. “Hey, don’t act like it’s my fault! You’re the one who fell asleep on me.”

After closing the front door, Lysithea turns her head to glare at him. When he raises his eyebrows at her with a smile, his head in his hands and his messy hair falling over his face, a softness somewhere in her starts chipping away the embarrassment.

She picks up the trunks and heads back over to Felix, leaning over the back of the sofa and closing her eyes as she plants a firm kiss on his lips.

Felix feels the heat gather in his cheeks when her lips unexpectedly land on his. He leans up into her and his fingers start to slide from his cheeks to hers, but she pulls away, lightly biting his bottom lip with a coy smile, leaving him flustered and wanting more.

Lysithea momentarily drops a trunk beside her to tuck Felix’s hair behind his ear.

“Go and freshen up,” she says as he looks up at her in a daze, placing her hand on his jaw with her thumb on his bottom lip before picking the trunk up again and turning away, blushing to herself at her own sudden boldness.

Felix’s heart thumps in his chest as he hangs his head back over the sofa’s arm and cools his cheeks with his cold hands before swinging his legs round and hoisting himself up.

The murmurs and mumbles behind the door grow louder as Lysithea closes in on her parents’ bedroom. Using her elbow to push down the handle, she stumbles into the room with the heavy trunks and drops them on the floor with a bang.

“I can explain–“

“Oh, my darling Lysithea, so he _is_ the boy you used to tell us about,” her mother coos, backing her up against the door and squeezing her cheeks.

“Mother, please don’t–“

Lysithea fights uselessly against her mother’s grip as she fires questions down at her, struggling to get a word in edgeways.

“How are his wounds doing? Is he eating properly? Is he going to stay for much longer? He can stay, you know. Doesn’t he have family waiting for him? Have you told him what you think of him? Why were you sleeping on the sofa, of all places to sleep? _Together?_ ” Her eyes widen as her grip on her daughter’s cheeks freezes.

“Did you– you know–“

“Oh, Mother, no!” Lysithea whines as she winces at her words, catching her father’s wary gaze over her mother’s shoulder, “No, we didn’t do anything like that!”

“Okay!” She blurts as she backs away from her, flashing an affectionate smile with her hands across her heart, “Okay. I understand.”

“So, just so we are, well, fully… in on the picture,” her father starts awkwardly, curling a finger round one end of his moustache, “What is the… situation?”

Lysithea sighs, realising there’s no way out of having to tell them _something_ about what happened.

“I don’t know, I just,” she stutters, “I told him some stuff, and he told me… some stuff… and we… we kissed?”

Her mother looks endeared with her hands still on her heart and a pout on her face as her father stands flabbergasted, jaw slightly dropped.

“Will he be staying? For good?” He asks.

“Um, yes,” Lysithea responds, “If that’s still okay.”

“Of course,” her father nods in return, a smile across his plump face.

Her mother sighs wistfully. “I never thought a day like this would come for you,” she confesses.

Lysithea had always thought so too. Not once did she allow herself to think that someday she would be treated with affection and intimacy – it was always only something she had dreamt about; certain she’d never find the time.

“Okay, listen up, you two,” Lysithea snaps, looking up at her amiable, unassuming parents with determination in her eyes and her fists clenched at her sides.

“You can’t tell him that I used to talk about him when I used to write home. Or that I talked about him when I came home after the war. You can’t tell him anything like that. And please don’t dig into him too much about his past. All of that will come with time. You got it?”

Her parents nod in sync with each other, looking down at her with mellow grins. Lysithea’s expression softens as she exhales and she flashes them an excited, youthful grin.

“Okay. I love you,” she beams up at her parents.

“We love you too, little one,” her father replies, reaching out to pat her head and pulling her in to be squished in a hug from them both.

“By the way,” she mumbles, jammed between her parents’ chests, “I accidentally smashed one of the plates.”


	9. Chapter 9

After cooling down from their awkward first meeting, everyone regathers around the dining table and Lysithea properly introduces Felix to her parents over tea and cake. He sits beside Lysithea and her parents face them both.

Mabel, her mother, is a slim, wrinkly, frail-looking woman – Felix thinks she is much more wrinkled than average for her age, at least compared to people he has met through his life. She always has a smile on her face and is kind and welcoming, but she is also rather absentminded and oblivious, and has a tendency to unintentionally overstep boundaries. Mabel has short brown hair with a few grey streaks here and there, and freckled skin tanner than Lysithea’s.

Lysithea’s father, Armin, is stout and stocky, and has a spectacularly healthy moustache despite his ginger hair already beginning to bald. He is red-cheeked and jolly and has a terrific laugh on him, and much like Mabel, seems far too gentle to be in a world like this.

Both of them are taller than Lysithea, but shorter than Felix, and Felix is not particularly tall. They don’t hold many similarities to Lysithea, he thinks, but he wonders if she might have looked more like them if it wasn’t for being subjected to the experiments that resulted in her stark white hair and unblemished pale complexion.

Thinking on the Ordelia family’s past, it angers Felix even more knowing they are such benevolent, harmless people, who never deserved to suffer in the ways that they did. Even after having the promise of their daughter’s long life taken from them – in addition to the deaths of other relatives and any other personal sufferings Mabel and Armin might have faced themselves – they still remain such tender souls.

Upon first meeting them, Felix swears a silent oath to himself that he will always watch over them in every way he can, for as long as he will live.

“Count Ordelia,” Felix nods in respect, despite the awkward tone in his voice, “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He considers for a second introducing himself as Felix of House Fraldarius, but the need for those formalities is far gone.

Armin waves a hand and shakes his head. “No need for that title now, son. We said goodbye to the county after the war. Please, call me Armin.”

“It’s so lovely to finally speak with you properly, Felix,” Mabel hums from behind her teacup.

“Thank you for being so hospitable when you had no need to be. I’m… very grateful,” he says, tentatively eyeing the two of them, uncomfortable as his guilt starts to seep in.

“Oh, don’t you worry. It’s been no trouble at all,” Armin responds, sensing his doubts and casting them away.

“I think Lysithea has enjoyed having you here.” Mabel chimes in. She immediately falls on the receiving end of a warning glare from her daughter across the table, winking back at her as she sends a forkful of cake into her mouth.

Felix smirks and looks down at the slab of cake on his plate, picking tiny chunks of it with his fork and nibbling slowly.

“So, you moved here straight after the war?” He asks, diverting the topic.

“Oh, well, the two of us did,” Mabel responds, “But Lysithea joined us after she finished her work in Derdriu.”

“Derdriu?” Felix questions, brow furrowed. This is the first he’s heard of it.

“After the war I spent about a year and a half working on the team founding their first magic academy. It’s called the Derdriu Academy of Magical Arts. Claude practically begged me to help out,” Lysithea explains with her head down, already sensing Felix’s confused eyes on her, picking at the cake as her words trickle sheepishly through her lips.

“You never mentioned it before.”

“It didn’t really come up in conversation,” she says, finally meeting his eyes with her fork between her lips.

“She’s being very humble,” Mabel intercepts on a tut.

“Her work was ground-breaking. The school is flourishing now. Lysithea earnt so much from her work there that we can live comfortably here for the rest of our lives,” she gushes, full of pride, though Lysithea across from her looks a little embarrassed.

“That’s amazing,” Felix says on an exhale, almost breathlessly, amazed at how even after the war, Lysithea was still providing for the future of Fódlan knowing her time was limited. Also, further back in his mind, he felt hurt that she hadn’t already told him – though, he couldn’t really understand why it hurt, and he thought that maybe she felt regretful or even ashamed for spending that time still working. So, in true Felix fashion, he decided it was best not to question it. At least not right now.

“And what about you, Felix?” Mabel questions, “What did you do after–“

“Felix! Do you… know how to play any instruments?” Armin bellows after Lysithea eyes him and nudges his shin with her foot under the table in a desperate plea for help, and Felix flinches at the unexpected volume of his voice.

“Instruments? No, I don’t,” he replies, “But my brother used to play the piano.”

Felix is just as shocked at himself as Lysithea is next to him when he mindlessly shares that memory of Glenn. His grip on his fork tightens.

Some of Felix’s first memories of growing up are wrapped up by the sound of sweet, smooth piano themes filling the halls of the castle.

Lively, spirited melodies as he sat in his brother’s lap in front of the grand piano, Glenn gleefully trying to play the tune through Felix’s little hands, leaning his chin on his head as he guided him.

Muted, gentle melodies climbing up the stairs as Felix stood on the landing, staring down at his older brother through the banisters, his eyes shut as he played delicate pieces as the moonlight bounced off his pale, scarred skin.

Even after so much loss now, Felix finds his grief still orbits around Glenn. The void that he left swelled as his friends left him, one by one. Every time the world around him becomes emptier his grief grows larger, as if each one of his losses physically manifests inside of him. It has grown far too crowded in there. Felix wonders how much more death can fill him up before he shatters into thousands of pieces.

“Piano, huh,” Armin responds collectedly, his tone changing after seeing Felix’s expression stiffen with his words, “A neat talent to have, indeed.”

A moment of silence passes between the four of them.

“I’m a guitar player myself,” Armin continues, “I’ve always played since I was a boy, but I have much more time to enjoy it now.”

Felix smiles up at him and Armin can see the numb grief in his eyes.

“We often visit a small school in Daphnel when we go into town, and Father likes to do performances for the children there,” Lysithea adds after squeezing his knee under the table, “We’re due to go again tomorrow. You should come along with us.”

“We bring them carved toys that Armin makes, and I sew little outfits for their dolls,” Mabel explains, “I also bring my sewing kit with me to repair their clothes and blankets and the sort. We like to bring them Lysithea’s baked sweets too.”

She sighs. “Of course, Lysithea used to love doing her little magic tricks for the children, but unfortunately she can’t do that anymore.”

Lysithea’s heart sinks in her chest when she catches Felix’s confused expression out of the corner of her eye.

“Huh?”

“Using magic weakens her now,” Mabel continues, nodding towards her daughter, “It is far too dangerous for her to be using any magic at all anymore.”

Lysithea had used healing magic on Felix when she came across him in the forest. Now he knows that saving him had harmed her. Felix feels his self-hatred fill his stomach, and he quickly loses what small appetite he had.

Suddenly, Lysithea stands up, twisting the fabric of her sleeves inside her closed fists, scowling down at her mother in silence.

“I am going to finish fixing Felix’s clothes outside,” she eventually says, avoiding eye contact with all three of them as she begins to tidy the table, even though only she had cleared her plate.

“Little one,” Armin says with sympathetic eyes, holding her arm in his hand as she reaches for his teacup. Lysithea stops for a moment and meets her father’s eyes, her expression softening slightly, before working through his light hold on her and continuing to tidy up.

Lysithea takes the stack of plates and teacups and leaves them on the counter, returning to the table and putting her hand on top of Felix’s.

“Do you want some fresh air?” She asks, though her eyes send a different kind of message: _Please, escape this moment with me?_

_Selfish,_ she scolds herself in her head for wishing away the confrontation, knowing that he deserves every answer he will struggle to demand in the first place.

“I…” He looks at Armin and then Mabel, who nods to him with a guilty face, patting down her clothes and clearing her throat.

“Yeah, okay.”

Felix barely stands from his seat before Lysithea takes off, dragging him behind her by his wrist as she collects his shirt and her sewing kit from the shelf and storms out the kitchen’s back door.


	10. Chapter 10

Felix and Lysithea sit beside each other on the garden bench underneath the clouds of the late afternoon sky as she works on patching his shirt. The air outside is cold, and she can see her breath in front of her face. She is focused but hasty with her needlework, her frustration coming through with her movements, and she does not say a word.

The silence between them greatly contrasts the volume of the storm brewing inside of Felix.

_It’s happening again,_ he thinks to himself, staring at stray pebbles of gravel on the ground.

That unnamed poison that has tormented him for as long as he can remember churns and festers inside of him once more. He can feel it crawling through him, consuming him from within, starting with his stomach and swelling all the way up beneath his skin.

Felix’s years of searching for fights with no real consequence ironically brought a numbness to it. There was no one putting themselves out for him, he had no responsibility for anyone but himself, he was alone. It was easier being alone.

As if it wasn’t already enough to know that Lysithea took the time and effort to help him, but that she suffered for it too?

Why would she do that?

This time, Felix has no bridges to contemplate falling from.

“Don’t do that,” Lysithea says sternly, catching Felix picking at the rough skin on his fingers. Her voice disconnects the empty whistles of the chilly wind.

“Old habit,” he huffs, crossing his arms to tuck his hands away from each other. The pair return to silence. Felix scans the green fields in his view, focusing on the frost that has settled on individual blades of grass to quietly distract himself from the guilt and self-hatred that screams through his very being.

The sun has set and the moon has risen by the time Lysithea nearly finishes working on his shirt. The air grows colder with the night sky, but it is still a comfortable chill. She always found that cold fresh air helped clear her thoughts, but after discarding four different possible approaches to talk to Felix, all she can find in it this evening is more frustration. Inside she’s begging for him to open the conversation – she can’t possibly approach it from the right angle until she first knows how he feels, she concluded – but she knows that he won’t start it first.

As much as she likes to think she’s good at reading Felix’s mind, he is rather unreadable in this moment.

Finding Felix on that day in the forest was like a miracle to Lysithea, even despite the condition he was in. It felt almost as if she had thought him back into her life again. He had crossed her mind countless times since he left the monastery only a week before her – she remembers the moment so vividly. He didn’t say where he was going or what he would do, and he seemed so different after the fighting had ended.

At a time where everyone was rejoicing and celebrating together, looking forward to happier days, Felix was more distanced and disordered than he ever was during the war. Lysithea always thought it was like the war had drawn a sheet over the things in Felix’s mind that he didn’t like to focus on, and so when the fighting was over, he had no choice but to face everything he avoided.

When she had stumbled upon him on the verge of death, an unfamiliar panic tore through her. To encounter him in such a state on the path she routinely follows every week to and from Daphnel sent her head in a spin. In the moment, he desperately needed the heal magic – Lysithea would never have made it back with him alive if she hadn’t had used it.

_And I’m already dying_ , she thought, _so what difference will it make?_

The magic hadn’t even weakened her that much. It would have made things so much simpler if Felix had never known.

Her mother’s innate ability to cross lines and spill such delicate words so easily never failed to amaze Lysithea.

A sharp shooting pain interrupts Lysithea’s bitter train of thought. She’d had it occasionally throughout life, but it had happened much more frequently between now and last week when she had used the magic. She winces and rubs her hand firmly on her chest to soothe it.

“Are you okay?” Felix asks, concerned. He sits up properly, out of the slump he had slipped into while counting the blades of grass.

“It’s fine,” she says through her grimace as Felix scoots closer to her, “It just comes and goes.”

“Can I do anything to help?” He asks as he takes the shirt and sewing equipment from her lap into his, putting his arm behind her on the back of the bench.

“No,” she says on an exhale, the pain alleviating, and she looks back up at him, catching the almost child-like fear in his eyes.

“It’s okay. I’m fine now.”

She takes his hands in hers and holds them together in her lap, looking up at him with a small smile.

“I’m okay,” she reassures him once more as he shifts his gaze to look across the distance, avoiding her eyes. Lysithea has learnt that he does this when he thinks he might cry.

“You can’t… You have to…” Felix stumbles, struggling for words as he finally meets her eyes. Feeling tears of panic crawling painfully up his throat, he gives up on words and just leans into her, holding her shoulders in his hands and pressing his forehead against hers. His eyes are shut as he breathes her in, his thumbs rubbing on her sleeves, his nose brushing against her cheek.

Lysithea doesn’t cry easily, but his unexpected act of calming himself almost pushes tears out of her against her own will. Heart in her throat, she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls herself into him for a hug, resting her chin on his shoulder. Felix’s arms wrap around her waist as he buries his face into her neck.

Stray hairs from his half-knot tickle her cheek as they flow in the gentle wind. Lysithea leans her head against his and moves a hand into his hair, curling it around her fingers and holding him there as she looks across the frosty fields, glistening under the moonlight.

The two of them stay in each other’s comfortable embrace for a moment, and Lysithea closes her eyes as she caresses Felix’s head. His breath settles so much so that Lysithea thinks he might have fallen asleep right there in her arms. Feeling a wet coldness land on her nose, she opens her eyes to look up at the sky.

“Look, Felix,” she says, tapping on his back as she pulls away from him, “The snow.”

Felix blinks up at the sky through ever so slightly teary eyes, the light snowfall reflecting in them as they shine in the moonlight. Even though he’s scarred and hardened – both physically and emotionally – Lysithea thinks that in this moment he looks so youthful again; a nostalgic smile spreading across his face as he holds his palm out to feel the snow land there, tiny flakes settling in his black hair before melting away.

“You’re cold,” Felix says, noticing Lysithea’s shivers. Before she can even respond, Felix takes the stitched shirt from his lap and wraps it around her shoulders. It’s a thick shirt tailored to withstand the cold, and it gives her so much more warmth over her dress. She wonders how Felix _isn’t_ freezing in just a thin shirt that barely keeps him covered. People really mean it when they say Faerghus babies are built differently.

Felix collects the sewing kit from his lap and stands, reaching his hand out for Lysithea. Taking it, she follows him back into the house, dark inside as the candles burnt out, and Lysithea assumes her parents must have already gone to bed – thankfully, as she doesn’t think she could stand the sight of her mother’s face right now.

Lysithea closes the back door behind her as Felix returns the kit to the shelf, turning back around to face her in the darkness. She runs her fingers down the front seams of his shirt – her father’s old shirt which hangs loosely from him, fastened in the middle by two or three buttons – locking her eyes on Felix’s bandages.

“I should change these,” she says, undoing the buttons to size up the progress of his healing on his chest and torso.

Felix feels the heat rush to his cheeks and ears as he watches Lysithea undo the buttons on his shirt and run her fingers over his scars to examine how well they are healing. She doesn’t seem to notice the intimacy of her actions until she looks up to meet his eyes, her hands still on his torso, and he smirks down at her when she flashes a bashful grin.

"Sorry," she mumbles, catching his expression.

Felix takes Lysithea’s face in his hands and leans into her with a deep kiss, pressing her up against the door. He feels her fingers curl on his chest as he moves a hand down to her neck, snaking his fingers under her hairline. Lifting her chin up and tiptoeing to kiss deeper into him, Lysithea’s hands move to lightly tug on the collar of his shirt, closing the space between their bodies as their chests press even closer together. As Felix breaks away, he’s sure to leave her with a bite on her bottom lip as a way of getting revenge for when she had done that earlier in the day.

The two of them stand still, Felix still closing her in against the door, his intense eyes looking down at her with her face in his hands.

Cheeks flushed, Lysithea blinks up at him. “Bandages,” she says in attempt to slip away, despite not actually making any effort to move from him.

“Bandages,” he agrees on an exhale, stepping back and taking his hands off her, “Yep.”

Felix stands with his hands on his waist, running his tongue between his lips and rolling them inward as he watches Lysithea head to her room to collect her bandage kit. He turns to the spare bedroom only after her door closes behind her.


	11. Chapter 11

Felix sits patiently on the side of the bed as Lysithea faces him cross-legged while she changes the three bandages he has left. The room is dimly lit only by candlelight and the shine of the moon through the window. Had he been roaming alone still, he would have stopped treating the wounds already – and he was more than capable of changing the dressings by himself now – but he decides to let Lysithea do whatever she deems necessary.

“Lean forward for me,” she requests, hooking the bandage material around his back and lining it up against his stitched wound just above his abdomen. As Lysithea wraps the material around him and tightens it around his waist, Felix’s thoughts still linger on what Mabel had revealed earlier on.

The inability to form words on the matter is so frustrating to Felix it is almost physically painful. All of his guilt and negativity hovers over him like a storm, clouding his rationality – his innate instinct to run away and be alone desperately tries to kick into him, but in the past twenty-four hours, he finds he has become much better at clearing the clouds from his view.

_This is where I belong now_ , he tells himself. Somehow, despite the sour taste of his guilt, he knows it to be true.

“Lysithea,” he begins quietly, almost hoping that she might not hear him, but her hum in response denies him of that possibility.

“Why did you use heal magic on me?”

She sighs. “Because you were dying.”

Lysithea avoids his eyes and instead focuses on the job at hand, having now moved to applying her salve to the almost healed wound on his forearm.

Felix swallows down his frustration at her dodge of an answer.

“Why did you use it when you knew it would hurt you?”

“Because,” she huffs, her gaze lining with his, “You were dying.”

For a second Felix freezes, his mouth hanging slightly open as he tries to process that Lysithea – seemingly – held no regrets for saving him. If anything, she must feel relief, he suspects, knowing now how deeply she feels for him. It’s just going to take him a little while longer to grow used to this.

“And, at the moment,” Lysithea continues, "I am not."

“You should have told me,” Felix says, dejected, his eyes darting away from hers soon after he speaks.

“Felix,” she says on an exhale, guilt dripping from her words, “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you. I just thought… well… I thought it would be easier if you didn’t know.”

Lysithea takes his hand in hers, smiling at him when he looks up to meet her eyes once more.

“I know what you’re like,” she says with a tilt of her head. Felix can see the shine of the candlelight reflecting in her warm scarlet eyes. Usually he hated these lines from anyone around him – Dimitri, his father, Ingrid, Sylvain, Mercedes, the list goes on – but he’s working on convincing himself that maybe it’s okay for Lysithea to know him so well.

“It was not a decision I made lightly,” she continues as she applies the salve to his arm, reading from his expression that he needs more of an explanation, “I wouldn’t have done it if I had thought the negative consequences would outweigh the positives.”

Felix gives a slight nod as he processes the depth of her decision.

“That positive is you being here with me.”

His face softens a little. “I understand.”

“So, will you put this behind you now?” She asks tentatively as she wraps a light bandage around his forearm.

“Just… Be more honest from now on,” he responds, a slight sharpness in his voice.

“I wasn’t dishonest, Felix,” she says on a scoff, moving to crouch on the floor in front of him to tend to the bandage around his thigh, “I just withheld certain truths. There were no benefits to you knowing about it. I didn’t want to waste time on it.”

Silence fills the room as Felix fights his urge to argue back with all the inner strength he can muster. Fighting with her is the last thing he wants. He watches her as she fastens the new bandage around the wound on his thigh, then she stands up between his legs, looking down at him with her hands lightly on his shoulders.

Lysithea avoids his eyes for a short moment before meeting his gaze as she speaks to him.

“I will be more honest from now on,” she says reluctantly.

Felix gives a gentle smile up at her, wrapping around her waist and pulling her in, arms relaxed on her hips and his chin on her chest. A faint blush rolls across her cheeks and she runs her fingers through his hair, tucking it behind his ear and stroking her thumb against his cheek. She takes his face in her hands as she plants small kisses on his forehead, his nose, and his lips before quickly breaking away again.

“You look sleepy,” she says, the softness of her tone matching her gentle gaze, “You should get some sleep now.”

Felix closes his heavy eyes and hums in response. He unfolds his arms from around her, leaning back on them as she collects her bandage kit and walks off.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says with a smile from behind the door, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he replies, eyes boring through the door after she closes it behind her.

Felix extinguishes the candle and buries himself under the covers, head swarming with unorganised thoughts and feelings as he desperately tries to fall asleep.

He focuses on understanding Lysithea’s sacrifice for him – though, he still has trouble accepting that she put herself in harm’s way to save him, even now knowing how she truly feels for him. There’s no denying now that she holds him in the same place in her heart that he holds her, he knows that for certain, but it just doesn’t feel like a reality yet.

So, he spends some time processing that this is, in fact, reality.

Felix finds himself grinning like a fool as he lets the raw truth of her love break through the dark barriers he had created through his life. Barriers of negative beliefs he had always known to be true; he could never be loved, never be wanted or desired (or was it that he wouldn’t _allow_ it?) – and in recent years, he could never truly be needed anymore. He was an empty vessel, an abandoned body wandering across all corners of the land, chasing adrenaline to bring his spirit back down to him for even just a minute.

Lysithea’s love – her pure, true love – is the antidote he has always needed for that unnamed poison of guilt and hatred living within him.

Not a minute can be wasted not being by her side.

Felix throws his legs off the side of the bed and wraps his shirt around him – it smells clean and is sporting new patches with delicately finished stitching – as he reaches for the door handle, making his way to Lysithea’s bedroom.

Slightly opening the door, he peeks into her room, and notices that it is still lit by candlelight even an hour or so after they had said goodnight. Smiling to himself, he enters her room and finds her sleeping on her side, her hair covering her face and her head dozing on the book she was reading instead of on her pillow. Felix quietly extinguishes the candle at her bedside and gently crawls under her sheets, snuggling up into her back and tucking his cheek against the small of her neck, careful not to wake her. To his surprise, she adjusts into his embrace and tucks her hair behind her ear.

“Can’t sleep?” She asks, eyes still closed.

Felix tightens his hold around her waist and breathes her in as she moves her hand on top of his, intertwining their fingers.

“I love you,” he says, with all the certainty in the world.

A huge smile spreads across Lysithea’s face. Sleep had been fighting against her too, and her mind was occupied with worry and concern for Felix. She had let herself fall into him, but he seems reluctant to take the fall himself too – it’s not hard for her to work out that its due to his own hesitations and is no fault of her own, rationally. However, the worries that were running circles in her mind crumble away at his words. She rolls over to face him, slinking one arm over his side.

“I love you too,” she says as her eyes meet his.

They stare at each other in silence for a moment.

“Can I ask you a question?” Felix asks.

“Of course,” Lysithea responds.

“Will you tell me the truth?”

“I will.”

Lysithea begins to fiddle with the hem of Felix’s shirt between her fingertips.

“How does it hurt?”

She looks down to his chest and pauses for a moment. Felix’s gaze does not move from her face.

“I get a sharp, sudden pain in my chest, where my heart is,” she begins, “I even used to get it occasionally when I was younger. It happens more often now. The crest experiments were blood reconstruction experiments, and one of the consequences of successfully having the two crests implanted was that my blood doesn’t seem to flow so well around my body. The pain is caused by that straining my heart, I have concluded, and it is worsening as I am growing older.”

Felix’s eyes dart across all corners of her face trying to read her expression.

“To be honest, I don’t think that using the heal magic last week had any particular correlation to the pain. I would be getting it more frequently around now, anyway. Magic can be learnt by people with or without crests, it is only advanced by crests. Using magic just makes me feel faint and a bit tired out, really.”

Despite her believable words, Lysithea knows that using the magic _did_ accelerate the progression of her fragility somewhat. She's not totally lying to him – she would be frailer now, and she had gradually been growing weaker in recent years. She decides a white lie is worth the slight guilt she'd feel for it, as long as it could bring Felix some sort of peace. 

Her eyes flicker up to meet his again.

“So, you are not responsible for my pain at all. I would have had it anyway. That is my calculated conclusion.”

She looks sad, but calm – a numb sadness that Felix can relate to, albeit for different reasons. Lysithea nestles her head under his chin, sliding her arm under his shirt and running her fingertips across the scars on his upper back before her hand settles in a small fist, her knuckles against his skin.

Felix closes his eyes, the mild clean scent of her hair and the feeling of her body curled against him willing sleep to come to him much easier than when he was alone.


	12. Chapter 12

Lysithea wakes naturally as she feels thin rays of the rising sun poking through the gaps in the blinds of the window above her bed. Opening her eyes, she looks up to see Felix fast asleep, peaceful and undisturbed, his breath soft against her face with one arm lazily draped around her waist.

Upon attempting to wriggle away, she is immediately pulled back in by him, groaning as he folds both arms around her and tucks her under his chin. Heart fluttering in her chest at the unexpected embrace, she wraps an arm around him, running her fingers up and down his back.

“Felix,” she whispers to him from the warmth of his snuggle under the sheets, “I have stuff to do.”

“Stay with me,” he says softly, his eyes still shut, “Too early. Five more minutes.”

Lysithea smiles against his skin and trails tiny kisses on his neck. As much as she’d love to stay in his arms, she needs to get up and prepare everything for their trip into Daphnel later today.

Felix mumbles incoherently in sleepy discontent as she successfully slinks out of his hold, reaching out and sluggishly grabbing the end of her night dress as she gets out of bed. Endeared, Lysithea leans down to plant a kiss against his temple, brushing his hair from his face.

“Go back to sleep,” she whispers to him, caressing his cheek with her thumb and turning to pull the blinds closer to darken the room for him. Felix gives a drowsy huff in response and buries his face further into the pillow. Lysithea freshens up, cleaning her hair and teeth using her self-made products, and exits her bedroom to begin her morning routine once more.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Mabel says from behind her book and breakfast at the table in the middle of the kitchen as she hears Lysithea’s door close behind her.

Lysithea rolls her eyes to herself.

“Good morning, Mother,” she replies, a bitter tone still dripping from her words.

Avoiding eye contact, Lysithea immediately busies herself preparing a morning meal for the cats and swiftly heads outside to leave it in the garden. She greets Armin, who is already outside at his woodwork bench, working on some extra carvings to bring to the school today.

“This horse is excellent,” Lysithea says, appreciating her father’s handiwork as she runs her fingers over the smooth wooden figure.

“Thank you, little one,” Armin responds, showing her the other figures he’s currently neatening up.

Lysithea and her father spend a while sharing laughs and small talk as the sun continues to rise over them.

“Lysithea,” he calls after her as she heads back to the kitchen, “Please… patch things up with your mother. You know that she meant no harm.”

Hand on the doorknob, Lysithea sighs and turns to look back at her father, who gives her a gentle smile. She knows that he is right, but her stubbornness still holds her from being able to really forgive her slip up.

“Okay, Father,” she nods, flashing a smile back to him as she goes back into the house, “I’ll talk to her.”

What she really meant was that she would wait for her mother to bring up the topic, act as if it did no damage, and neither of them would end up apologising to each other, brushing the whole thing under the rug and carrying on as if it never happened. That is the relationship she and her mother have grown to have, especially in recent years. Lysithea decided that for her, it was easier to forget than to forgive, and so she would do just that.

When Lysithea enters the kitchen, she takes her mother’s plate to the wash basin for her as a silent proposal of peace.

“Thank you, darling,” Mabel says, turning the page of her book and not looking at her daughter.

Lysithea busies herself gathering baking supplies and preparing the kitchen space. Her plan today is to bake her usual sweet cake with sugar frosting and fresh berries for the topping, but this time she also wants to try mixing honey straight into the batter. She’s never tried that before, so she greatly anticipates the end result. The more shockingly sweet a cake is, the better.

The children at the school tend to prefer having smaller individual cakes because it rules out the problem of sharing, but her ingredients will work best on a larger cake. If she slices it before she gets to the school, it creates a loophole and they take no interest in arguing over who gets a smaller or larger piece.

“Lysithea,” Mabel starts hesitantly, putting her book down in front of her.

“Yes?” Lysithea responds, her back still turned as she focuses on mixing the ingredients.

Mabel sighs. “I am sorry for whatever I did that upset you.”

Lysithea stops moving and clenches her jaw to fight her urge to yell at her mother.

“It’s okay, Mother,” she says, turning to meet her guilty, apologetic eyes. Even if she can’t give the apology she’s looking for, Lysithea appreciates that she actually managed to utter that she is sorry. She has given up hope that her mother will ever be able to truly understand her. Their relationship is not strained; Lysithea has always spoken openly with her and she loves her very much, but she does wish that these small difficulties could disappear.

Mabel’s eyes soften as she smiles at her daughter, and she stands to hug her. Lysithea returns her embrace, tucking her chin into her mother’s shoulder, patting her back as she feels her play with the ends of her hair.

“I am sorry too.” The apology is almost painful as it leaves Lysithea’s lips. It does not come easily to her. Especially in situations like this where she still feels that her reaction was just.

The two move on, sweeping it under the rug as expected, and Mabel joins Lysithea in her baking.

“I would like to know more about him,” Mabel says as she rinses the woodland berries, “I think that is fair, since he will be living with us now.”

Lysithea bites her lip.

“To be perfectly honest, there’s still a lot I don’t know. But I think I’m getting there.”

“He seems very dark and broody.”

“He’s been through a lot,” Lysithea says, “He lost his older brother during the Tragedy of Duscur. I think that must have been the real turning point in his personality. His friends used to say he was an entirely different person before that.”

“A very understandable change,” Mabel comments, genuine empathy in her tone. Despite her unfortunate talent of messing up conversations and her innate nosiness, Lysithea knows that her mother is one of the kindest, most generous souls she has ever met, much like her father.

“After that, he had a very complicated relationship with his father, too,” Lysithea continues, “But I don’t know why. I never knew him well enough then.”

“During the war, I remember hearing that he had turned up at the monastery alone one day, after he found out that Alliance forces were gathering their strength there. He abandoned the Kingdom because it was falling apart. He didn’t want to fight for a lost cause,” she explains, heartache in her throat as she thinks about everything Felix has been through, the sacrifices he must have struggled to make, and how much she wishes she could have been by his side.

“Did you go to see him?” Mabel asks.

“When he arrived? Not straight away,” Lysithea responds, “I was busy, and… I didn’t know how to approach him. So much had changed.”

Mabel hums in understanding.

“I wonder what it was like the last time he saw his friends,” Lysithea says pensively.

“I wonder if he just took off in the night or if there was a confrontation. Did they ever even know he was leaving, or did he just disappear one day? They were good people, my Kingdom classmates. I didn’t know them so well, but… I just wish…”

She finds her words trail off as a single tear falls from her eye onto the countertop.

Mabel drops her equipment and immediately scoops her daughter into her, somewhat in shock at seeing her cry. It has always been such a rare sight, and it breaks her heart.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she coos, “You’re crying?”

Lysithea doesn’t respond as she wraps her arms around her mother, sobbing quietly into her chest. Mabel strokes her head to soothe her.

“It was so hard. It was so, so terrible. Why couldn’t we all stick together?”

“It’s okay, darling, it’s okay. You know you can cry here with me.”

Lysithea feels her heart wrenching in her chest as she cries, surprised at her sudden tears, embarrassment already settling into her. She silently prays to every god and goddess in every land that Felix will not walk in on them in this moment; he’d make a fuss – understandably so, and in a way it is comforting to know that he would – and Mabel is used to how she deals with her tears, but Felix is not. It is not something she has the time or motivation to discuss with him at the moment.

Crying is so exhausting. She hates it so much.

“And then, after the war,” Lysithea picks her words up again as she wipes her wet cheeks with the back of her hand, mumbling into her mother’s clothes, still in her embrace, “He just took off into nothing. He changed the second the fighting was over. He seemed so broken and lost. I am so grateful he’s still alive.”

“Isn’t he from House Fraldarius?” Mabel questions, trying to continue the conversation as if her daughter wasn’t sobbing, knowing she’d only be embarrassed and upset if she made a deal out of it.

“He says House Fraldarius is no more,” Lysithea answers, calming from her tears, pulling out of Mabel’s hold and facing her, holding her hand, “He renounced everything, and his father died in the war. I think Felix is the only one left, but there’s no way he’ll ever take it. He left us before Claude even had a chance to talk to him about it.”

Mabel gives an empathetic pout as she swipes her thumb across her daughter’s cheeks to wipe away any tears she had missed herself.

“He will always have a home here,” she says, “No matter where the future pulls him.”

“Thank you,” Lysithea responds, finding there’s no way to express the depth of her gratitude, her mother’s tender words lifting a huge weight from her shoulders.

“I hope that he will not choose to wander alone again after I am gone.”

Turning back to her baking, Lysithea clears her thoughts and once again focuses on her plan for the day. She always aims to not dwell on her emotions, because she resents wasting time crying; at least over things that she cannot change, things that have passed, or things that make her sad. If she is going to cry over Felix, it will be for happy reasons.

Mabel and Lysithea continue to bake peacefully and exchange only light words, like about the flavours of the cake, how perfectly ripe the winter berries are right now, or the funny way Armin swings his axe for such small chunks of wood before they are the right size for him to carve. Lysithea treasures moments like these with her mother the most. Moments where death doesn’t matter. Moments where she feels the most alive.

A couple of hours pass before Felix exits the bedroom, and he is met by the sight of Lysithea with a mortar and pestle in her hands hovering over the table, which is covered in a number of glass jars and containers filled with all sorts of different ingredients.

Mabel, now sat in the other room in the armchair with Armin on the sofa across from her, smiles and wiggles her eyebrows at her husband from behind her teacup when she notices Felix appearing from Lysithea’s room rather than the spare bedroom. Armin awkwardly clears his throat and buries his nose in his book.

“Hey, you,” Lysithea greets him warmly as he walks towards the table, eyes analysing the jars, “I’m putting together some of my different salves and ointments to take to the school.”

“How do you even know how to make all of this?” Felix asks, picking up two jars and reading the labels, written in Lysithea’s own small, scribbly handwriting.

“A lot of it is just stuff I’ve put together in the past couple of years, but I learnt my first few recipes from Hilda,” she reminisces, “The first thing she ever taught me was how to make a sweet smelling perfume from specific flower oils.”

Felix smiles as he looks down at her, her tone chirpy and light-hearted as she easily shares fond memories with him. He scans different labels, finding ingredients for the hair cleaning balm she makes, a kind of sweetener she uses in teas for Mabel, a mint-scented body wash, and so much more.

He leans on the table with one arm and holds up a jar with no label containing a bulky green herb he doesn’t recognise. “What’s this one for?”

“I crush this one and mix it into an ointment for a chronic pain Father gets in his knees,” she explains, taking the jar from his hands and analysing the herb inside, “It’s one that helps soothe joint pains. A lot of these don’t have labels… I really should get onto that.”

Lysithea puts the mortar and pestle aside as she stretches across the table to grab some small containers.

“This is more of the salve I’ve been using on your wounds,” she explains, the familiar scent creeping into Felix’s nostrils as she opens the lid, “It’s a pretty easy recipe. I can teach it to you sometime.”

“Yeah, that would be nice,” he says with a nod, impressed at her wide variety of self-created products.

She looks up at him with her cute smile and bright eyes, and Felix wraps an arm around her side, lightly pulling her into him. Suddenly, the sweet aroma of whatever is currently baking in the oven catches Felix’s attention.

“Are you baking?” He asks.

“Yes!” She says enthusiastically, twirling around to the counter and abandoning the cluttered table, “Oh, you have to try this!”

Felix perches on the side of the table as Lysithea turns back round to him with a blob of test-run cake mix on a plate, holding a forkful of it in front of his mouth. It does not look particularly appealing in that state, but it’s cooked, and he’s never met a better baker, so he decides to put his trust in her.

Lysithea’s eyes widen like a toddler as she watches Felix munch and assess the flavours in the cake.

“So?” She asks hopefully.

“It’s nice,” he says, “It’s really sweet.” He winces at the overwhelming sweetness as he chews more. “Very sweet. What _is_ that?”

“Honey! In the batter!” She beams. “Genius, right? I never tried it before!”

Squealing with glee, she turns to put the cake mix down again, and then scuttles over to the oven to check how the cake is progressing. She returns to Felix, loosely wrapping her arms around his waist and tapping his butt playfully, that mischievous glint in her eyes once again.

“You’re up just in time to help me decorate it,” Lysithea says with a cheeky smile.

Felix grins down at her as his teeth zing in his mouth. This cake will be a big hit with kids, that’s for sure.


	13. Chapter 13

Whilst waiting for her cake to finish baking, Lysithea busies herself finishing up the final salves to bring to the school with her. Felix stands by her side eating breakfast, observing her process as she introduces each ingredient to him, tapping on the glass jar and reading key points from her hand-written labels to explain their uses.

“That’s the last of them,” she says, scooping the final scraps of the salve into a container and closing the lid.

“So, what’s with the school?” Felix asks, “Did you go there at some point or something?”

“Oh, no, I was always raised in Ordelia territory,” she explains, packing the containers into her satchel, “Shortly after moving here, I came across a teacher with some children from the school after visiting the bakery in town. I offered them some of my sweets I bought, and they were so grateful, so I wanted to bring them some of my own baking one time. I pulled my parents in too, and after that, it just stuck.”

“That’s sweet,” he responds, helping Lysithea pack away the many jars that crowded the tabletop into the cupboard they came from, “It’s good of you to keep going back.”

“I really love seeing the children’s happy little faces when we bring them sweets and new toys,” she says, “Plus, my mother became really close friends with the women that work there. And to be honest, I think being there really breathes some life back into my parents, especially my father. He seems to be struggling a little more with retirement than my mother is.”

“He was a busy man, I assume,” Felix adds, somewhat relating. He had always been certain he wouldn’t live long enough to see a day where he wouldn’t fight. Once the war ended, he had lost any sense of purpose in life. That is, until he happened upon Lysithea that day in the forest.

“House Ordelia was a prominent house in the Alliance,” she continues, “He was very dedicated to his local work. Even in his spare time he was only ever productive, either with his woodwork, playing the guitar, often painting too...”

“That’s where you get it from, then.”

“Huh?”

“You find it impossible to just stop and spend time doing nothing. It’s not a bad thing. I’m the same way. I can’t stand idleness.”

“Hm,” Lysithea hums in agreement, “Except for you, it tended to manifest in constantly training to the point of exhausting yourself.”

“I’m sure I remember catching you knocked out flat on a book in the library a fair few times,” Felix fires back whilst reaching up into the cupboard, and the two share a competitive glance at each other before Lysithea softly smiles up at him.

“Your way turned you into an unsurpassable swordsman,” she praises, stepping closer and wrapping her arms around his waist as he leans against the counter.

“And yours turned you into an unparalleled mage,” he returns and takes her face in his hands, dipping his chin to meet her with a kiss, the sweet scent from the oven and a slight breeze through the window filling the space around their close bodies.

Being here is safe and comfortable, Felix thinks. When he kisses her, it feels as if time slows in the very air around them. Different to how it slows numbingly while fighting. Different to how it slows painfully while grieving.

When the two separate, Lysithea spins around to take a final look at the cake in the oven and decides that it is fully baked. Felix is impressed that she can tell just by looking at it before even taking it out, and he admires the sparkle in her eyes as she removes it from the oven, the steam rising in front of her face, proud and satisfied.

Lysithea places the tray on a stand on the counter, removing her oven mitts and clapping her hands together, putting them on her hips triumphantly as she turns to Felix.

“How’s that for a perfectly round cake?”

Felix steps closer, and indeed, the cake does seem to be in the shape of a perfect circle.

“Impressive,” he compliments with an approving smile, and Lysithea raises her eyebrows and nods.

“Thank you.”

Suddenly, she ducks down to reach into the cabinet, moving with such speed and excitement she almost smacks Felix’s knees with the door. When she hops back up, she holds the tray of fresh fruits her mother had washed in front of Felix, signalling for him to take it. He does, but only after stealing a strawberry from the mix and eating it, receiving a tut in response from Lysithea as she ducks down once more to take out the case of sugar frosting.

“Right,” she begins wholeheartedly, practically slamming the case down on the countertop due to her enthusiasm, “Today, you will learn how to properly decorate a cake. The skill set I am about to bestow on you will be a shining light amongst everything else you have learnt in life until this moment. Mark my words, Felix Fraldarius, you _will_ be a changed man. Are you ready to embark on this journey?”

Felix stands blank faced with the tray of fruits in his hands, conspicuously chewing on a fruit Lysithea hadn’t seen him nab.

“I’m ready,” he says, popping a blueberry into his mouth.

Lysithea takes the tray from Felix, placing it beside the cake on the counter, and equips him with an apron matching hers and a wooden spatula. She ties his hair back into a bun, and Felix manages to steal three more berries from the tray before she notices and smacks the back of his head.

“So,” she begins while rinsing her hands, as Felix peers into the tub of sugar frosting, “You just scoop some up and plop it on the cake.”

Felix hesitates. “Show me.”

“You can do it,” she encourages with an eyebrow raise and her arms crossed.

Felix sighs and dips the spatula into the tub, finding the frosting is stiffer and stickier than he expected. Nevertheless, he scoops up a big blob, dumping it in the middle of the cake and turning back around to Lysithea in search of approval.

“Good,” she says with a satisfied nod, “Now just spread it. Evenly and thin.”

Felix hesitates once more. Before he can turn to her again, Lysithea tuts and wraps one arm around his waist under his apron, leaning her head against his arm and guiding his spatula hand to spread the frosting in a circle motion on the cake.

“Like this,” she says, looking up at him, “You got it.”

Felix’s ears turn pink.

“I don’t want to mess it up,” he laughs out as he flicks stray hairs off the front of his face, embarrassed at being so timid all over decorating a simple cake. But Lysithea is the queen of baking, and this cake is going to be for kids – what a sting it would be if they thought it was ugly or unappealing.

“You won’t mess it up!” Lysithea says on a laugh too, both arms wrapped around his waist under his apron now, her cheek squished against his arm as she carefully observes his frosting technique.

“It is all about being creative,” she continues, “You can’t get it right or wrong.”

“Yeah, but it can be ugly,” he defends, concentrating on getting both sides of the cake’s frosting on the same level.

“It won’t be ugly,” she says, “I’m here with you.”

Felix feels his cheeks flush again.

“This is dumb,” he huffs, “It’s not going to look nice. You should just do it.”

“Oh, just frost the cake, fool!” She snaps playfully, and Felix bursts out laughing, Lysithea soon joining him, feeling his laughter vibrate through him against her.

Dipping into the tub again, Felix spreads more frosting around the outer edges of the cake to level it out, Lysithea still comfortably attached to him.

“Done,” he says, waving the spatula above the cake, “It’s all even.”

“Yes, perfect,” she agrees, planting a kiss on his arm, “Good job.”

“Now what?”

“Now you have to put the frosting around the sides,” she says while smiling, already knowing he’ll protest.

“Around the sides?!” Felix complains, turning the cake stand around and analysing the edges of the cake. It’s going to be impossible to frost the sides. He’d just perfected the art of finishing the top.

“You can do it,” Lysithea encourages again with a giggle.

“Take a smaller amount of frosting on the end of the spatula, then put it on sideways and swoop around the edges,” she explains as Felix furrows his brow in concentration, tilting his head as he calculates the best angles to approach from.

“Maybe you should do this part,” he suggests, handing the spatula over to her.

“You won’t learn if you don’t try,” she says, but Felix does not budge.

“Please, Felix? Just try it?”

She looks up at him with a tiny pout and sparkles in her puppy eyes.

“For me?”

And Felix feels his insides crumble.

“Fine,” he huffs, remaining cool on the outside, trying his best to contain himself. It’s no use, though; Lysithea can feel the strength of his heartbeat through her embrace. She smiles triumphantly as Felix dips the spatula back into the tub, his ears pinker than ever before.

Unwrapping herself from Felix, Lysithea stations herself beside him and starts cutting the larger berries into smaller, even shapes. As Felix works on the cake a pensive sigh slips out of him, and Lysithea is quick to notice.

“What was that for?” She asks as she cuts.

“It’s just,” Felix responds hesitantly, “Are you sure I should come with you?”

“Do you have something better to do?” She asks sarcastically, swiping some frosting off the cake and sucking it off her finger – of course, Felix swiftly responds with a tut and a glare.

“It’s not that. I don’t want to impose–“

“No, that’s not it. You’re past that now,” Lysithea says, and Felix no longer finds himself shocked that she can read between his words so easily, “What’s the real reason?”

“I… have no idea how to interact with children,” he says, “At all.”

“Ha! You’ll be fine,” she responds, “There’s not a magic sort of way to talk to them. My parents handle all the cringey cooing. Just follow my lead.”

Felix sighs and lets out a self-deprecating chuckle.

“Ingrid and Sylvain used to say that kids are scared of me,” he says sheepishly, running the spatula round the side of the cake, “My… face.”

Lysithea laughs at him at first, but seeing him fight his embarrassed expression makes her feel bad for that. She reaches over to squeeze his arm supportively as his gaze does not move from the cake.

“Hey,” she says, “Kids get scared for the stupidest reasons. What does it matter? I think you’re very handsome.”

A small smile crawls across his face.

“And besides, if they can handle my mother and father, I doubt they’ll even think twice about you,” she says, and the two of them laugh together.

After composing himself, Felix turns to look at Lysithea, and she feels his gaze linger on her with such warmth and love in his usually sharp brown eyes. Even now that their true feelings for each other are out in the open, brief glances like this still make her heart flutter. She is certain that Felix doesn’t even know he’s doing it.

With a tilt of her head, Lysithea furrows her brow as if questioning the look in his eyes, and he slinks one arm around her shoulders, pulling her into him and planting a kiss on the top of her head.

“So, what do you want to do with the fruit?” He asks, his chin resting on the top of her head as Lysithea wraps an arm around his waist.

“Hmm,” she ponders, tilting her head as she envisions possible designs, “How about in a spiral shape, with a split strawberry in the middle?”

“You’re the boss,” Felix says with a nudge, reaching past her to grab another berry from the tray.

Lysithea repositions herself in front of the cake and selects a few berries to place on the top. Felix, finally free from cake duty, busies himself packing up the last items to take to the school. He still dips in a couple of times in between to steal fruits. Lysithea can’t find the heart in herself to tell him off for it.

“You actually did very well with the frosting,” she comments as he whizzes past her, appreciating the even layer as she presses berries into it.

“I know,” he says with a smirk.

“Next time, you can bake the cake with me too,” she hums in delight as she continues working. Felix rolls his eyes to himself.

“We’ll see,” he says, though he already knows he’d love to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just wanna leave a quick note that, i've moved back home for the summer holiday and its significantly harder to find the time to sit down and write lol
> 
> so updates may be a little slower ;-; but also, the chapters are getting much larger from the next part onwards, so i hope it will be worth the extra wait! and as always thank you so much for reading my story <3


	14. Chapter 14

“Alright, you two,” Mabel hums enthusiastically in the doorway as she fastens her cloak’s hood, “Are you ready to go?”

Felix stands in front of Lysithea as she ties a cloak around him. The cloak is black with brown fur lining the edges – a dark match to her white one – and is made of thick fabric to withstand the winter chill. It is one that Mabel had crafted many years ago for Armin, but he had outgrown it far before she finished working on it.

“Let’s get you some nice clothes in town, okay?” Lysithea suggests, tapping the knot of his cloak as she finishes tying. Before dropping her hands, she twirls a finger around a strand of hair that found its way out of Felix’s bun, admiring how soft he can look without even realising – especially when he’s not putting in the outward effort to scowl.

“I can’t afford to get multiple things,” Felix confesses, suddenly reminded of the measly gold pouch that remains attached to his sheath belt, “But I’ll pick up a shirt or two.”

Lysithea shushes him. “You should get more than that. Let me pay for it.”

She can already guess how he’ll react.

“I don’t think–“

“Hey, I worked really hard in Derdriu after the war,” Lysithea says, putting a finger up to Felix’s lips to hush him again, “I will spend my money as I please. I would like to buy you some new clothes.”

Felix pouts his lips against her finger as he looks down at her. His eyes drift to his sword in its sheath, propped against the wall behind the coat hanger – all the dirt and blood had been cleaned off. He assumes Lysithea had done it herself while he was recovering. As his eyes linger on it, his palm itches for its familiar feeling, even just the comfort of resting his hand on the hilt at his side.

Lysithea drops her hand and follows Felix’s gaze, letting out a quiet sigh when she realises what he’s thinking.

“It’s safe here,” she says, crossing her arms, “You don’t need to bring it.”

“Lysithea,” Felix starts, after a moment of hesitation, “I haven’t been anywhere without a weapon since I was a child. I knew how to swing a sword before I knew how to write my own name.”

Pursing her lips, Lysithea huffs at him.

“Please understand. I should have it with me,” he continues, “You won’t even know its there.”

“There’s no need for it,” Lysithea defends, summing up all her strength to hold back from rolling her eyes or raising her voice at him.

“Well,” Felix says in a low voice as he takes a step closer to her, changing his words into something she may be more inclined to accept, “If there was any need for it, I’d be able to protect you.”

Even though her initial reaction is to protest, Lysithea knows he’s right – since she doesn’t use magic anymore, she’s defenceless, and her parents are useless as well. Breaking away from Felix, she walks over to his sword and brings it back over to him.

“Are you going to let me pay for your clothes?” She asks, with a tilt of her head and an eyebrow raise. Felix nods in silent response, and Lysithea pushes his sword to his chest, burying herself back into her cloak as he takes it.

“Good,” she says with a cute smile, moving to leave the house, and Felix follows her.

“Thank you,” he mumbles from behind her, putting on his sheath belt like second nature. He takes a deep breath to brace himself – emotionally, more than anything else – as he steps outside.

“You better not let the children see that thing,” Lysithea nags as she walks, “Those kids are crazy excited about weapons, they’ll be all over you!”

* * *

The ride into Daphnel was comfortable and peaceful. The cold winter air was filled only by the exchange of quiet small talk and hooves crunching last night’s snow as the four made their journey. Felix was kept warm not only from his cloak, but also from holding Lysithea close as the two shared a ride on one horse – Bonnie. Their other horse, named Lucky, had the more unfortunate fate of being ridden by Mabel and Armin, who bickered for three whole minutes about who should sit in front of the other.

As Felix rode through the white forest with Lysithea fitting so perfectly in his arms, overhearing squabbles and laughs from her parents ahead of them, he felt so whole – so grateful that, even after everything, he had the fortune of finally ending up in a pleasant little world like this.

Arriving at the town’s stable, the pair separate from Mabel and Armin momentarily as they check their horses in. Felix dismounts Bonnie first and reaches out to help Lysithea down too, steadying her with his hands on her waist as she holds his shoulders and hops down.

“That was a rather noble technique,” she teases sarcastically as his hands remain on her waist, and Felix ruffles her hair in retaliation. Lysithea flashes a quick glare up at him as she fixes her hair while they lead Bonnie into the stable.

“Here, girl,” Lysithea says softly as she feeds her an apple, petting her neck and nose.

Whenever she spends time with the horses, Lysithea can hear Marianne’s old words in her ears – _the horses always appreciate it when you show them your gratitude._ She was never quite too sure how much she believed in Marianne’s… skill of talking to animals.

“Thank you for the comfortable ride,” Lysithea mumbles to Bonnie under her breath.

Felix chuckles to himself overhearing her words she had tried so hard to conceal. He undoes Bonnie’s saddle belts and gathers their bags, slinging the heaviest over his shoulder and carrying the other two in his arms. Lysithea soon returns to his side, catching his subconscious loving gaze that had become so familiar recently. No matter how familiar it may grow, it still manages to give her butterflies.

“What?” Lysithea questions in defence as Felix smiles down at her, shaking his head and laughing again in response. She sticks her tongue out at him as she takes one of the bags from his arms.

She loves seeing him smile like that.

“Let’s go find my two troublemakers,” Lysithea says, sensing her parents squabbling in her bones.

They only had to reach the stable entrance again before hearing Mabel’s tinny voice ranting about something or other.

“Oh, Felix, thank the Goddess you came with us,” she says, breathless, scuttling towards him with four small satchels in her arms, “These bags are so heavy. Be a dear and take them for me.”

“Oh, um, of course,” he stutters, unable to get a word in before she unloads them onto him.

Mabel plops the satchels – which are much lighter than she had made out – on top of the larger bag Felix was already holding, and he catches Lysithea rolling her eyes beside him as her mother fumbles.

“Good boy,” she says, patting on his shoulders. Felix winces. For a moment, he fears she’ll pinch his cheeks. A cold glare from Lysithea seems to successfully destroy her temptation to do that.

“You see, Armin?” Mabel says as she turns to look at her husband, who was already carrying the largest of their bags and his guitar case, “Felix is a true gentleman. So strong, and young, and handsome…”

“Okay, alright,” Lysithea finally intervenes, unable to bite her tongue any longer. She zooms to her mother, linking their arms and dragging her off with her. “Let’s go.”

Mabel looks over her shoulder at Felix with a mischievous grin, winking back at him as if to say, _I got her again._ Felix laughs. Armin laughs too.

Not before long, the four arrive at the school – a small, worn down building that looks more like a regular townhouse than any sort of school Felix has seen. It’s one in a whole row of buildings with the same design and structure, on a small street on the outer ends of the town. The outside porch area displays two huge planter boxes on either side of the front door, children’s handwritten name labels tucked beside each little sprout in the soil. A colourful banner hangs from the wall trimming and children’s drawings are stuck on the bottom half of the front windows.

“Leave the sword at the door,” Lysithea mumbles through gritted teeth as she leans closer to Felix, “Cover it up with your cloak.”

Mabel knocks on the door, and they are quickly welcomed by a short, plump, spectacled woman, and a scruffy calico cat curling its tail around one of her legs.

“Hello again! It’s lovely to see you,” she greets warmly as they enter one by one, with Felix trailing at the back – seemingly serving more as a pack mule than anything else. He feels his nerves bubble in his stomach the second he steps over the threshold, but why?

He knows exactly why. It’s been years since he’s had to interact with anyone without it being for whatever job was bringing in the next sum of money. Even then, those people would be toughened by something or other – not like the people here; soft, innocent and naïve, most of them children, untainted by violence and brutality.

Felix is rather uncomfortable here.

Mabel, Armin and Lysithea get busy greeting and chatting to the other ladies in the room, moving off into separate directions of the building faster than Felix can even process the words of the woman in front of him.

“Oh my, who’s this?” She asks with a smile, adjusting her round glasses and taking half of the bags from his arms, placing them on the wooden bench beside her.

“Uh, Felix,” he responds, feeling heat already rushing to pinken his ears, Lysithea too far away to rescue him, “Just… Felix.”

“Well, Just Felix, it is lovely to meet you,” she smiles kindly once more, “My name is Ruby.”

After putting down the rest of the bags and hiding his sword in his cloak, Felix gives an awkward nod to Ruby and shuffles to Lysithea’s side once more, quietly looping an arm around one of hers as she finishes chatting to another middle-aged, kind-looking lady.

“Are you okay?” Lysithea asks as she turns to Felix, looming over her like a shadow.

“Mhm,” he hums vaguely as he clears his throat, “Just… stick by me?”

Lysithea can’t help but laugh. Felix Fraldarius, second son of the Kingdom’s famed House Fraldarius, a seasoned warrior and unwavering mercenary, who could swing a sword before he could write his own name – _this_ man fears… children?

She has never met anyone quite like him.

“Of course,” she reassures him, pulling him along with her to follow behind her parents.

“You’ve arrived just in time for their break,” Ruby says as she leads them down the hall, “Will we be having some music today?”

“Of course,” Armin beams, tapping on his guitar case, “I always come prepared.”

“Excellent,” Ruby says, “We are so grateful for your entertainment. It gives us ladies a moment to rest, too.”

They enter the back room of the ground floor – a tiny attempt at a school hall. Wooden stools and benches are pulled into rows with an empty space at the far wall of the room, a makeshift stage area for assemblies. At the back of the hall there is a double-wide wooden door with huge glass panels to bring lots of natural light in. The door leads out to the back-garden area, a large spread of grass full of worn garden toys, tall wooden fences lining it.

As Mabel continues chatting to Ruby, Armin gets settled in the empty stage space and begins tuning his guitar. Felix and Lysithea stand against the wall.

“What is this place?” Felix whispers, leaning into Lysithea.

“Almost all these kids are either orphans, or from really poor families,” she explains, “Forgotten by the world. The women here make sure that they get to eat good meals and they’re learning. So, it’s not a school exactly… But I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“Hm,” Felix hums, crossing his arms and leaning his back on the wall, “That’s an admirable job. They must struggle keeping this place afloat.”

Before Lysithea can respond, their small conversation is interrupted by the thunder of dozens of tiny feet clambering down the staircase. Felix can feel the vibrations through the wall. The children’s squeaky voices grow louder as they scramble down the hallway.

_Here we go_ , he thinks to himself, his stomach flipping.

“Just be yourself,” Lysithea says as she nudges him, sensing his unease, “You’ll be fine! These kids are tough cookies.”

Just like that, a small crowd of children burst into the hall, screeching and giggling as they zoom straight past Felix and Lysithea, most of them running straight to sit in front of Armin. Two girls head to Mabel and Ruby instead, tugging on Mabel’s dress, and she lifts them up in her arms, her face bright with joy as she talks to them.

Felix looks down at Lysithea, quietly watching her mother with a pensive smile on her face. A sigh escapes her lips. Before Felix can question her, the two of them are joined by a tall, slim, grey-haired woman, catching her breath as she tails behind the end of the horde of children.

“Goddess,” she groans, putting her hands on her hips, “Though I must say, Lysithea, that has gotten much easier since I started using those herbs you recommended me.”

Lysithea giggles. “I’m glad they’ve helped at least a little bit.” She tugs on Felix’s arm, and he shuffles round to face the new woman.

“Felix, this is Bessie. She’s one of the ladies who runs the school,” Lysithea introduces the two, and Bessie reaches for a handshake. Her handshake is much firmer than Felix expected for such a feeble looking lady.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Felix,” she says, and Felix stiffly nods in agreement.

“Felix is my…” Lysithea starts, her words trailing off.

Oh Goddess. Oh _Goddess_ no. This is so embarrassing. Felix can feel the blush crawling across his cheeks.

“Felix… is my partner,” she decides on with a nod, confidently disguising the tremble in her voice. Felix purses his lips.

“Ah! Oh, good for you, sweetheart!” Bessie coos, and she cups Lysithea’s cheek in her hand. Lysithea almost successfully manages to fight a blush until then. Coming here is like having four extra mothers. She can’t deny she adores them though.

“I best be off,” Bessie continues, nodding in the direction of the wild troop gathering around Armin as he struggles to share his attention between each child, “Don’t forget to hide a slice of cake from the kids for me!”

“That was embarrassing,” Lysithea giggles, slumping back against the wall next to Felix. Her smile fades when she looks up at him, visibly unsettled.

“Hey,” she says, moving to stand directly in front of him, “Do you really feel that bad about this?”

“No, it’s fine,” Felix shrugs, resting his hands on her shoulders, “I’m just… a little out of my comfort zone.”

Lysithea really, _really_ wants to tease him, but she bites it back.

“We can go outside, if you want to? Go do something else in town?”

“Maybe in a bit,” Felix says, looking away from her, his eyes instead rolling over the numerous tiny heads sat on the benches watching intently as Armin plays guitar. Bessie very quickly accomplished bringing order to the swarm.

“I do want to stick around for a little while.”

Felix likes kids, but his issue was that they’ve never liked _him_. He hadn’t realised he’d built up such a guard about it. He curses Sylvain and Ingrid in the back of his mind.

Suddenly, Lysithea jumps and a yelp escapes her – making Felix jump too – as she feels an unexpected tug on the back of her dress.

“Um, Miss Lissy,” a tiny voice says from behind her, “I’m sorry if I scared you.”

Lysithea turns to face the child and crouches down in front of him.

“Oh, Micah, you didn’t scare me!” She says on a giggle as she ruffles his curly brown hair, “I was just surprised.”

“I’m sorry for surprising you,” he says, biting his lip and looking down.

“Aw, it’s okay, you don’t have to apologise,” Lysithea reassures him, holding his tiny shoulders in her hands, “How have you been?”

“Fine,” Micah mumbles, “I made you something.”

Lysithea exaggerates a gasp. “You made something for me?”

Lysithea’s eyes follow Micah’s hand as he reaches into his scrappy satchel and pulls out a doll made of twigs, messily finished off with purple and white fabrics to represent her clothes and hair.

“Oh, Micah,” she coos, immediately cringing on the inside at how much she sounds like her mother, “She looks just like me!”

Micah flashes a huge gummy smile up at her and passes the doll into her hands.

“I want you to keep her!” He exclaims excitedly, evidently proud that Lysithea loves his gift.

“Thank you so much,” she says, running her fingers over the cheap fabric used, “I will take her home with me. You’re very good at this. You should make one of yourself too!”

Micah giggles and throws himself into Lysithea for a hug, knocking her back to fall onto her butt, and she laughs with him after her fall. He curls up in her lap, pulling on her hair and touching all over her face as he mumbles incoherently to her. Felix wonders how she can put up with such close contact from a kid that has probably touched so many gross things.

As if sensing Felix’s thoughts, Micah looks up from his comfortable position in Lysithea’s lap and stares up at the silent, shadowy figure who had been leaning against the wall this entire time. Lysithea lifts her head to look up at him too.

“Micah, this is my friend Felix,” she says in a calm, natural voice, tapping on Felix’s shin to encourage him to crouch down by them, “Say hello.”

“Hello, Felix,” Micah says, looking up at him through suspicious brown eyes, leaning further into Lysithea as Felix reluctantly gets down on one knee beside them.

“Hello, Micah,” he says, definitely overthinking the smile he puts on with his words. Lysithea gives him a proud look before turning back to Micah.

“Felix helped me make today’s cake,” she says enthusiastically, as Micah squishes her cheeks, “He’s very good at it.”

“You like to make cakes too?” Micah asks, tugging on Lysithea’s dress as he shyly talks to Felix again.

“I…” Felix starts, and Lysithea widens her eyes at him, giving an encouraging nod, “Yes… I like making cakes.”

Felix has never seen Lysithea grin so wide. Micah giggles excitedly.

“I want to make cakes too when I grow up!” He exclaims, tugging on Lysithea’s hair, and she winces. “Can I please see today’s cake, Miss Lissy?”

“Well,” Lysithea drags, pointing a finger at her father across the room, “We could take a sneak peek, but it looks like the show is about to start. Shall we go take a seat?”

With a huge smile and a final, extra enthusiastic tug on Lysithea’s hair, Micah jumps out of her lap and onto his feet. He bounces a few times on the spot before dragging Lysithea, who drags Felix behind her, towards the benches to watch Armin’s performance.

Micah leads Felix and Lysithea to one of the further back benches – not that the audience is particularly full, anyway – and stands in front of them as they sit down, gently patting their knees with his tiny hands. He sits in between Lysithea’s legs, his legs dangling above the floor as he plays with her hands in his lap.

“Looks like I’ve got some competition,” Felix teases, clearing his throat and leaning into Lysithea, and she giggles. Before she can whip up a witty comeback, Mabel slides next to her on the bench, elbowing her in the side as a greeting as Armin begins playing the guitar and the murmurs of tiny voices fade away.

Felix notices three girls follow Mabel to the bench like baby ducks after their mother. The girls look around the same age, and a bit older than Micah must be. Instead of joining them on the bench, one of the girls walks up to Felix instead – a blonde haired, green eyed girl, who bears a striking resemblance to one of his dearest friends from a very long time ago. Her hair is tucked into two loose braids, tied with green bows at the ends.

“Hi, Mister,” she says quietly underneath the sounds of the guitar, smiling up at him, “You have cool boots.”

An awkward laugh escapes Felix at the unexpected compliment.

“Thank you,” he says, eyeing a tarnished leather bracelet on her wrist, “You have a cool bracelet.”

“Thanks,” she says, perching on the bench next to him, “It was my papa’s. He died in the war.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Felix mumbles, unable to look at her, so he stares at the floor instead, “I lost some of my people as well.”

“Well, we’re still here, aren’t we?” She says as she looks up at him, optimism in her tone.

“Yeah,” he sighs, “Yeah, we are.”

“I’m Alice,” she introduces herself, swinging her legs from the bench.

“I’m Felix,” Felix responds.

“You fought in the war?” She asks.

Felix scoffs. “I did.”

“Awesome,” Alice says, nodding her head as she watches Armin’s performance, “Do you have a sword?”

“I do.”

“Did you bring it?”

“…No.”

“Boring,” Alice tuts.

Felix slips his hand into one of Lysithea’s, stealing it from Micah’s lap. She looks up at him.

“You okay?” She mouths. Felix assumes she hadn’t overheard his short conversation with Alice. He nods and purses his lips in response.

“You’re doing great,” she whispers after leaning closer to him, her lips accidentally brushing on his ear, causing his hairs to stand on end.

“Thank you for being here,” she whispers again, having leaned away from him now, resting her chin on Micah’s unruly curls as she looks up at Felix.

He wouldn’t miss it for the world.

* * *

After finally removing Micah from clinging to her, Lysithea managed to escape the school with Felix and two small slices of her cake in hand.

They visited a clothes store, picking out some new clothes for Felix that were _actually_ his own, and not her father’s old scraps. Lysithea picked up some pieces for herself too, in hopes to soothe Felix’s reluctance. Then, they quickly popped to Lysithea’s favourite café, picking up a freshly brewed pot of Almyran Pine Needles to go, and Lysithea snuck an extra couple of boxes past Felix to save for his birthday.

She brought him to a quiet spot she loves to return to – a small, open patch of grass in front of a tiny lake, overlooking the nearby mountains that stand between Daphnel and Galatea territories.

“Micah seems close to you,” Felix says as the pair sit under Lysithea’s favourite shady tree, the leaves so thick it had completely shielded the grass from the recent snowfall.

“He made me a doll,” Lysithea coos, holding the doll in her hands again, “He made me a doll. That’s so cute.”

She turns to look at Felix, and he laughs at her.

“Your face is all scrunched up.”

“It’s so cute!” She shouts in defence, running her thumbs over the rough twigs.

“Are you gonna cry?” He teases with a smirk, playfully shoving her shoulder.

“I don’t cry,” she huffs.

But then she does cry, and she is just as surprised as Felix is.

“Oh, hey,” Felix says, his sarcastic tone completely gone, scooting closer to Lysithea and pulling her between his legs as he leans against the tree, “I’m sorry. Was it me? I was only joking.”

“Shut up,” she says on a sniffle, wiping her tears with her sleeves, and then she starts laughing.

And she can’t stop laughing.

Felix laughs too. “What is wrong with you?”

“I don’t know!” Lysithea whines, punching him as she continues to half-laugh, half-cry, “Help.”

“What am I supposed to do about this?” Felix laughs at her, tucking her hair behind her ear and under her hood.

“It’s you,” she says with a sob-giggle hybrid, wiping her cheeks again, “It’s you.”

“What’s me?” Felix asks, leaning his head back on the tree and smirking down at her.

“It’s you,” she repeats, laying her head on his shoulder. She fiddles with the fur that lines his cloak.

“You make me happy,” she says shyly, “I always wanted… you, and then one day, you were gone forever, and now you’re here, and…”

Felix puts his hand on her head and leans down, planting a kiss on her forehead.

“No,” Lysithea cries, “Don’t be nice to me. You’re making it worse.”

“I thought I made you happy.”

“You do! That’s what I’m saying!”

Felix laughs again; a deep, loud laugh that rumbles in his chest as Lysithea leans against him. She pulls his cloak around her – already wearing her own – burying herself in the huge thing with him, slinking her arms around his waist and hugging him tightly.

“You’re here,” she says quietly as if confirming it to herself, her voice muffled as she speaks into his shirt, “You’re really here, and you’re _mine_.”

Felix puts his hands on her shoulders, guiding her to twist around and face him, his intense eyes staring up into hers as she kneels. Snow begins to fall around them, settling on the layers that already cover the ground.

Lysithea’s hands rest on Felix’s shoulders as he delicately holds her face, wiping her tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. He leans up to trail gentle kisses on the spots where tears had fallen, slinking his fingers behind her ears to the back of her neck, her hood gradually falling off her head as a result. Feeling his fingertips in her hair and his nose brushing against her face with his kisses causes goosebumps to creep across her body. Sliding his arms into her cloak, he wraps around her waist and pulls her even closer into him, watching as a pale blush spreads across her cheeks.

“You’re all gross and snotty,” Felix teases through a smirk, blood rushing to his ears and cheeks as he feels her breath on his chilled skin.

“Shut up, no I’m not,” Lysithea argues with a sniffle, taking his face in her hands and tilting his jaw up as she leans in to meet his lips with hers.

They kiss for a while – for longer than they have before. Lysithea’s hands move all over – holding his cheeks, tugging on his cloak, wrapping her arms around his neck to pull herself deeper and deeper into him. Felix’s hands travel beneath her cloak from her shoulders to her hips, covering every inch of her back through her clothes.

She pulls his hood down, reaching for his hair tie and untying it, intertwining her fingers into his dark locks as they fall from the bun. Felix lets out a quiet, husky moan when she lightly pulls on his hair, her kisses growing bolder and more desperate at the sound.

The fluttery feeling in Lysithea’s stomach swells as Felix’s touch wanders to her legs, the unfamiliar sensation of his hands pressed on her soft thighs hot against her cold skin. His fingers gradually sneak underneath the hem of her dress, eagerly clutching his grip on her fleshy legs, her head spinning with curiosity and passion as she breathlessly groans into him, wanting _more_.

But, instead of more, Felix pulls back to catch his breath a final time, lightly biting on Lysithea’s thumb when she brushes it on his bottom lip.

“The tea will get cold,” he says with his eyes on her lips and his hands still under her dress, savouring the feeling of his chest rising and falling underneath hers. He can see their breath in between their faces, and also notices that the snowfall had become much heavier since it began.

_Forget the tea_ , Lysithea thinks as she pouts down at him, but after leaving a few last pecks on his pinkened lips, she pulls out of his hold and sits beside him, pouring the tea for them both – now the perfect drinking temperature.

“Hey,” Felix says on a chuckle as he ties his hair back into a bun, “I stopped your crying.”

“Shut up,” Lysithea scoffs as she digs into her cake slice. He laughs again.

For a while, the two of them sit beside each other in silence against the tree, enjoying the snow in their cosy cloaks, the refreshing cold air filling their lungs. Felix admires the reflections on the lake and its gentle ripples as snowflakes melt into the water, appreciating the small shelter the two of them share beneath the tree.

“I want to know more,” he says, cutting the silence, turning to meet Lysithea’s eyes as she looks up at him, “I want to know more about you.”

She smiles. “Like what?”

“Just, like,” he stumbles as he thinks, “Just random things. Anything. Your first pet. Your favourite colour. Your favourite book as a child. Your favourite book _now_. Little habits you have that I haven’t picked up on.”

“Hm,” Lysithea hums behind her teacup.

“And,” Felix continues cautiously, his eyes drifting to look across the water, “I want to know… the harder things. Things you don’t want to talk about. The crest experiments. Growing up as House Ordelia struggled to rebuild itself. Hardships during the monastery days. Your toughest days during the war. Your toughest days since the end of the war.”

A silence picks up between the two of them again as Lysithea’s mind whirrs. Does he really want to know all of that? The ins and outs of everything that her life has come to be?

Still, she cannot see a reason to _not_ feed into his curiosities.

“My first pet,” she begins, lining the ridge of her teacup with her fingertip, “Was a white, fluffy, blue eyed cat named Lily. My favourite colour is purple. My favourite book as a child was _The Warrior Princess of Morfis_. My favourite book now is _The Blade in the Mist_. It has been that for two years.”

Felix finally looks down to meet Lysithea’s eyes again, and she hesitates for a moment. She puts her cup down at her side, shuffling round to face Felix directly, crossing her legs and holding his hands in her lap.

“One of my little habits is fiddling with the hems on clothes. I find it comforting. I line all my books in alphabetical order, but in order of the authors’ surnames, not the book titles. I write my lower-case A’s starting from the flick instead of the circle part. I like playing with the scruff of skin on the back of cats’ necks. I always thank horses after a ride – but Marianne is to blame for that one.”

Lysithea runs her thumb up and down each of Felix’s fingers as she speaks.

“I want to know all this stuff about you too,” she says, her head down.

Felix takes a deep inhale before he speaks.

“My first pet was a Fraldarius Wirehair named Binx. I don’t have a favourite colour, but I would probably choose blue. I used to love all the Faerghus books about knights when I was younger. I can’t remember the last time I properly read a book. I mess with the skin on my fingers. I’ve done it since I was young, and it makes my skin so rough and callous; I’ve always hated my hands because of it. When I tie my hair in a bun, I always twist it to the left, because it always falls loose when I twist it to the right. I… can’t think of much else, as far as habits go.”

Lysithea nods.

“I don’t hate your hands,” she says, still holding his hands in hers, and he smiles at her.

“Tell me about your work at the magic school in Derdriu,” Felix says, taking another mouthful of tea.

“Ah,” Lysithea says, smiling as she recalls the memories – many fond, many hard.

“My ‘golden days’, as my mother would say.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just wanna say thank u for being patient aaaaaa im really struggling to find the time to write but hopefully ill still be able to get updates out on a regular basis <3 and thank u for enjoying the story so far :)


	15. Chapter 15

Year 1187, Blue Sea Moon

It was set to be another bright summer’s day in Derdriu, and the early morning sun glared through the windows of the staff dormitory corridor. The floorboards creaked beneath Lysithea’s feet as she crept through the hallway, making her way to Marianne’s room. In her head, she prayed that she had remembered their agreement to wake up early and discuss the coming meeting. 

Almost a full year had passed since the end of the war and the unification of Fódlan – now the United Kingdom of Fódlan, of which Derdriu was the capital city, and it had grown much larger in recent months. The city’s overall growth led to its finances being spread thinner than Claude and Byleth had initially planned for. That said, the multiple world-class institutions that Derdriu boasted were not left deprived of funding – quite the opposite, in fact. At least, that was true as far as Lysithea could tell.

She couldn’t quite wrap her head around why Claude had practically forced her into the Derdriu Academy of Magical Arts’ half-hearted attempt at requesting financial aid from the Fhirdiad School of Sorcery – a long-standing institute, founded hundreds of years before the ‘rejigging of Fódlan’, as Linhardt referred to it. 

The academy did not need funding, and if it did, Lysithea surely would know, as she was a member of the board. Originally, Claude had only roped her in to the founding of the academy to oversee and approve the curriculum that his team of magic misfits had put together, but he always seemed to find another reason to keep her around a while longer before she could take off to the middle of nowhere with her parents. At first, she only planned to stay for two months, which then extended until the end of last year, which somehow pushed further back to her birthday, and before she knew it, the headache inducing sunshine of the Blue Sea Moon had crept up behind her once more. 

Apart from studying, publishing works, tutoring and giving lectures, Lysithea spent much of her time undergoing all sorts of unsuccessful crest removal experiments at the hands of Claude’s crest freaks – she mainly worked with Linhardt, who was nothing but the textbook definition of a crest freak, but she’d probably say that he belonged to Marianne rather than Claude. 

Linhardt was officially based at the New Enbarr Magic Institute, but most of his time was spent at the Academy by Marianne’s side – though, he was more likely to be found with his nose buried in another scrappy old tome or chronicle that Claude had somehow schemed into the library. Linhardt preferred working with the Academy, as he said its ties to the Fhirdiad School were more reliable than the Institute’s. Hopefully, Lysithea won’t completely screw that up for him in this coming meeting with their Head.

The Head of the Fhirdiad School of Sorcery was none other than Annette Fantine Dominic, who must have returned to her family during the war instead of joining the Kingdom forces, Lysithea guessed. In hindsight she clearly made the right choice, seeing as how the Kingdom had been all but squashed out of existence. 

Lysithea knocked on Marianne’s door, and soon heard the shuffle of her feet from the other side. 

“Have a cookie,” Marianne said upon opening the door, placing one of the dining halls’ chocolate chip cookies on top of Lysithea’s stack of papers.

“Well, good morning to you too,” Lysithea chuckled as she entered. She hadn’t eaten anything yet and it was a little early for such sugar; eating the cookie would be a bad idea, but she could not resist.

“How did you even get a cookie this early?” She asked, admiring its perfect golden-brown colour and chocolate chips.

“Night cravings,” Marianne said with a laugh, lifting the lid of a whole tin of cookies as she tapped her pregnant belly, “The cooks find it hard to say no when I’m working really hard creating another person inside me. I’m using these months to my advantage, and I’ve still got three of them left.” 

The pair laughed together as they sat in front of each other on Marianne’s bed – which Linhardt was still fast asleep in. Upon facing her, Lysithea suddenly picked up on Marianne’s lingering worried expression. 

This was not her ‘I’m nervous about the meeting’ worried. This was not her ‘The baby kicked weirdly, and I scared myself into thinking something is wrong’ worried. This was her ‘I lost something important’ worried. 

“You’re buttering me up, aren’t you?” Lysithea moaned with a squint as she broke off a piece of the cookie and ate it.

“I may have… misplaced my first four months’ finance records for the faith department,” Marianne confessed sheepishly, her body tensing as she anticipated Lysithea’s rage.

“You _what?!_ ” Lysithea shouted in disbelief, “We have to be ready to present in the conference room in two hours!” 

“I-I’m sorry!” Marianne shouted in defence – as much as Marianne could shout, “I don’t know where they are. I kept them in my office ever since I signed them, and I only brought them to my room once I was organising the presentation for today’s meeting, and I had them on my desk last night right before I went to bed, and–“

“I put them at the back of the folder,” Linhardt mumbled from his pillow, startling Marianne and Lysithea by being awake enough to hear the conversation.

“What? Why would you do that?! I’ve been so stressed searching for them all morning!” Marianne argued – as much as Marianne could argue – grabbing her pillow from behind her and giving her husband a pathetic smack with it. 

“I was trying to help,” he mumbled again, drifting back off to sleep before Marianne could get another word in. 

“I… Well, I guess that solves that,” she said, turning back to Lysithea, who was happily nibbling away at her cookie now, “I even went all the way back to my office to search for the papers.”

“Oh dear,” Lysithea chuckled. “So, you’re sure you’ve got your numbers down, right?”

“Yes,” Marianne said confidently, “And I’m going to head into my section after you clear up the research and library spending, and then we head into… the planned spending of any aid we’d receive from Fhirdiad.”

“Yes, that’s it,” Lysithea said as she shuffled through her pages of notes and records, “Okay, do me a favour and listen to my opening speech.”

Marianne nodded as she took a cookie from her tin, and Lysithea cleared her throat before reading from her cue cards. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, board members of both institutes, I’d like to personally thank you for coming to meet my co-Head Marianne and I, and apologise on behalf of King Claude, the Head of our institute, who is unfortunately not able to be here today. As you know, the Derdriu and Fhirdiad magical institutes have maintained strong and positive relations since our founding ten months ago. We have exchanged crucial discoveries into crest research that we could only uncover here due to the partnership between our two schools.”

Lysithea dropped her cards in her lap.

“That’s bogus,” she huffed as she rubbed her temples with her thumbs, “It’s a flat lie. Everything we’ve found so far was all our work. They’ve just given us a load of ancient tomes about black and white magic.”

“I think it sounds fine,” Marianne encouraged through stuffed cheeks, “It’s smart. Business-y.” 

Lysithea sighed as she picked up the cards and continued reading. 

“Today, we humbly request a loan of one million gold, with a long-term repayment plan. The funds would go entirely to our crest research directive, the pride of our institute, as we delve further into the uncovered mysteries surrounding crests.”

She scoffed. “It’s all pointless anyway,” she said, “We’ve uncovered nothing.”

“That’s not true,” Marianne said with a furrowed brow, “We’ve made so much progress into crest usage outside of combat, you know that.”

“Don’t trash talk my work, Lysithea,” Linhardt murmured, half-asleep and face down into the pillow.

Lysithea huffed. _We’ve uncovered nothing for me,_ she thought. It was already painfully obvious that behind closed doors, the majority of this funding would go towards further removal experiments for her, which were starting to feel wasteful. She straightened the cards and continued reading.

“The current priority in our research is refining the ways that crests could help us move into our modern world – we’d like to focus on how crest carriers could benefit and reshape the construction industry, creating specific uses for them without leaving non-crest bearers at a disadvantage.” 

“You know the funds are for you, right?” Linhardt asked as he rolled on his back, resting his hands behind his head as he snoozed. 

“Yeah,” Lysithea scoffed, “I guessed.” 

Marianne played with her thumbs as she sensed the coming conversation.

“I can’t believe Claude has spent so much money shipping random wizards and sages from Fódlan and beyond all the way over here just to tell me what I already know,” Lysithea huffed, “And now he’s even asking Fhirdiad for money. We’ve not made any progress. I’ve still got two crests in me. I know this is why he finds ways to keep me here, too.”

“I know you’re tired,” Marianne said, looking up at Lysithea with those sad, sad eyes, “But we have to keep believing in this. We are getting so close.”

Marianne took one of Lysithea’s hands in both of her own and smiled ruefully at her as she traced a finger along Lysithea’s scars.

“Please, hold on for a little bit longer.” 

Lysithea frowned as she looked into her friend’s eyes. 

“I will keep trying, for now,” Lysithea said reluctantly after a moment of silence, “If anyone is able to find a solution for this, it’s Linhardt.” 

Marianne’s face lit up with relief again.

“But I mean it, Marianne,” Lysithea added, in a lower voice, “I won’t stay forever. If we can’t remove the crests, I–“

“I know,” Marianne interrupted, her eyes sad as she squeezed Lysithea’s hand, “It’s okay.”

Lysithea let out a sigh as she slid her hand out of Marianne’s and began reading from her cue cards again. 

* * *

Reading through her speech again, Lysithea paced up and down the far wall of the academy conference room, filled with the low murmurs of board members greeting each other and making small talk. The whole Derdriu team had already arrived, but the Fhirdiad representatives were slowly arriving one by one, and Annette had still to make an appearance. 

“Don’t you think this is a job for Claude?” Lysithea asked Marianne, who was cooped up in the corner, nervously wolfing down a plate of the pastries that were put out for the board.

“Ooh, don’t tell me that,” Marianne said with a shake of her head, her voice trembling slightly with nerves, “I would rather be almost anywhere else right now.” 

“ _I_ _really can’t make it_ , he said,” Lysithea complained, mimicking Claude’s voice, “ _You two will have to do my infectious charm some justice_ , he said.” 

The academy bell rang for the hour. 

“She’s late,” Lysithea scoffed. 

“More pastry time,” Marianne said, offering the plate to Lysithea, who put a hand up and shook her head in decline.

“You know what?” Lysithea huffed, leaning against the window frame and tapping her cue cards against her palm, “He should choose a different Head for the academy. There’s plenty of options here. He can’t possibly imagine he can lead us well when he only shows up once every two or three months. He’s spreading himself too thin.”

When Fódlan united, Claude (and Byleth, the new archbishop) had elected efficient and suitable leaders for the different regions, yet he insisted on control of Derdriu – ‘for the time being’, he had said. It hadn’t taken Lysithea long to suss out that his reason of keeping a hold on Derdriu was to be able to work with her on crest removal, since every time he’d return to the city, he’d bring some sort of new method or foreign scholar with him. 

Claude’s current scheme to weasel funds out of Fhirdiad to be secretly spent on fruitless trials and experiments _all_ for Lysithea built up an overwhelming amount of guilt inside of her, which only grew larger and larger with each failure. 

“We could send a messenger to archbishop Byleth and see if we could meet with them about it,” Marianne suggested.

“Byleth is far too busy,” Lysithea complained with a dismissive wave, “Besides, I fully expect Claude to elect a new leader for Derdriu once I leave the city.”

Marianne sighed, giving Lysithea a pensive frown. 

“The Fhirdiad board members all have such intimidating faces,” Marianne said quietly as she scanned the room.

“Don’t get me wrong, we all know he’s an excellent leader,” Lysithea continued, washing over Marianne’s words entirely, “But he’s got way too much resting on his shoulders. He’s not even in Fódlan right now. He’s a control freak.” 

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Marianne mumbled. 

Before she could spring back, Lysithea began to hear the sound of heels clacking quickly on the floorboards, along with a familiar perky voice, apologising repeatedly.

“Sorry!” Annette blurted as she scuttled into the room, “Sorry, sorry. I’m so sorry I’m late.” 

Board members chattered amongst themselves, greeting Annette as she arrived. Lysithea scoffed to herself. Marianne elbowed her in the ribs.

“I got totally lost trying to find this room,” Annette continued, fixing her hair after putting her papers down at the opposite end of the long table, “This building is huge!” 

“Is this your first time at the academy, Miss Dominic?” A Derdriu board member asked. 

“It is,” Annette replied with a cheerful tone, nodding to familiar faces from Fhirdiad as she sat – though she immediately sprung up again when she locked eyes with Lysithea and Marianne across the room.

“You two!” She beamed after a gasp as she ran over to them, “I was hoping I’d run into you here!”

“You didn’t know it was us for the meeting?” Lysithea asked, her eyes widening as Annette pulled her in for a tight hug.

“Oh, I’ve been super busy, so my secretary looked over the invite for me,” she explained, “She never mentioned your names, so I had no idea until now.”

After finally releasing her from the hug, Annette held Lysithea’s shoulders for a moment, a huge smile plastered across her face. Lysithea returned the smile, though she felt it probably seemed much more forced on her.

“You got so much taller,” Annette said nostalgically with a tilt of her head, “I’m so glad to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Lysithea replied half-heartedly. 

“And Marianne – you’re having a baby!” Annette cooed as she greeted Marianne, the pair of them giggling and chatting together as Lysithea’s smile faded at their side. 

Annette seemed so unchanged by the war – at least, that was what she seemed like on the outside. Lysithea knew she always had more going on behind closed doors. People always do. 

“Hey, I’m sticking around for a night or two because I want to check out the academy more,” Annette said, “We should meet for lunch or something.” 

“That would be great,” Lysithea replied with a smile, “We’ll do it, for sure.” 

It wasn’t that Lysithea didn’t like Annette – she adored her, in fact – but she could never shake the feeling that she always tried to compete with her. Back in the monastery days, Lysithea would almost always win. Not that she was the one ever turning things into a competition, of course. 

But then comes this day, much further down the line, and Annette waltzed into the academy looking amazing, beaming happily at everyone she meets. She was already the Head of the most prestigious magic school in all of Fódlan, she had multiple studies published under her name _and_ she was still bright and adorable after the five years of wartime. 

Of course, Lysithea was successful too. She had also published works while at the academy, she had basically written the entire curriculum that Derdriu would teach for years to come, and she had already headlined a number of prominent deals with both the Fhirdiad and New Enbarr institutes. 

But Annette was doing better. 

Lysithea wasn’t used to being second place. 

Marianne cleared her throat as she pulled Lysithea forwards with her, signalling to get ready to present.

“Right,” Annette started, slapping her hands on the table as she sat at the far end, “Is everyone ready?”

Annette’s eyes circled the faces at the table before landing on Lysithea and Marianne. 

“Let’s begin,” she said with a nod and a grin.

* * *

“Ooh, that was terrible,” Marianne whispered between handshakes with board members as they filtered out of the conference room, “What is he thinking? One million is far too much to ask. They won’t give us the funds. They won’t.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Lysithea replied back through gritted teeth behind her smile as she said goodbye, “I did fantastic. I think they’ll do it.” 

Marianne let out a concerned sound of disagreement. 

As more people gradually left the room, Lysithea caught sight of Annette again – she was standing with a couple of her Fhirdiad colleagues, leaning over the table as she swapped some files around between them, and spoke between them too quietly for Lysithea to overhear. The conversation ended on a smile though. That was hopefully a good sign. 

The final board members left as Annette packed her notes into a neat pile again, and the three of them were left standing in the room. 

“Thank you again for today,” Marianne said as she shook Annette’s hand on her way out.

“Oh, really, it was no problem at all!” Annette chirped. “Over at Fhirdiad, we really admire all the work you guys have churned out regarding crest usage in industry. You’ve got an outstanding crest team here.” 

Lysithea bit her lip as she blocked any snide comments slipping from her mouth. The bell rang to signal the end of class, leaving a five-minute travel time until the next one, and the busy bustle of students quickly filled the corridors.

“I’ve got a lecture to give now,” Marianne said as she started backing out of the room, “I’m actually swamped all day. I’ll see you both some time tomorrow?” 

“Oh, of course!” Annette replied with a grin, “No worries. Have a good class!”

Lysithea nodded to her as she left, turning to Annette.

“Looks like it’s just you and me now,” Annette said, linking an arm through Lysithea’s. “If you’re free, would you mind showing me to your thunder studies section in the library?”

“Of course,” Lysithea chuckled, and the two began walking together. 

As the two made small talk through the hallways, Lysithea found it increasingly difficult to avoid bringing up the one thing on her mind. How did Annette survive the war? When did she leave the Kingdom forces, and why?

How did she seem so okay after so much had changed?

“You know,” Annette said, “At Fhirdiad, there’s not a single familiar face from before the war. Lorenz pops in and out on Goddess-knows-what business, but that’s about it.”

“Annette,” Lysithea giggled, “Surely you should know why he comes to visit. You’re the boss of the whole place.” 

“Eh,” Annette shrugged dismissively, “I’m sure someone in management knows all about it. It’s only Lorenz. How important can it be?” 

“I can’t help but ask,” Lysithea started as they approached the library entrance, “How did you manage to survive the war, let alone work your way up at Fhirdiad?” 

Annette let out a sigh as she hesitated on a reply. The two of them entered the library, which was almost entirely empty save a couple of scholars here and there. Lysithea led Annette over to the thunder studies section as she waited silently for a response.

“I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me if it’s… too much,” she said, aware that she was insensitive. They were good friends, but it had been years and years since they had seen each other. 

And, Lysithea fought on the side of the war that destroyed Annette’s homeland. 

“No, it’s fine,” Annette said, her tone significantly dampened compared to the rest of the morning.

“My uncle called me back to Dominic territory at the start of the Great Tree Moon in 1186. Dominic was Imperial aligned, at the time. He didn’t just call me back, he demanded it – I’ve never had another message that intense in my life. Fortunate he did call me back, though, considering a couple of weeks later…” 

“I know,” Lysithea said pensively, “Gronder.” 

“Yeah. Anyway, he managed to get me a position teaching at Fhirdiad when the unrest in Faerghus cooled down and the unification process was going on. House Dominic has already become one of the most prominent houses in the old Kingdom territory, since so many others were wiped out.”

Lysithea tried to hide a grimace as she put herself in Annette’s shoes, picturing her family in that kind of situation. 

“I don’t know how I became the Head of the school so quickly,” Annette chuckled half-heartedly, preoccupied by scanning book spines and collecting them into a pile on a nearby desk. 

“You’ve clearly got what it takes,” Lysithea encouraged as she sat at the desk, watching her browse the shelves.

Annette turned around with another book, adding it to her pile, and she paused for a moment as she faced Lysithea, biting the inside of her cheek. 

“I’m not the only one who abandoned the Kingdom, you know,” she said, as if she felt the need to defend herself to her. Lysithea put it down to the atrocious Faerghus culture of _dying for your King_ and possessing a predetermined duty to your homeland – never quitting, even when you know you’re fighting a losing battle. 

“Hey, you don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Lysithea tried to interrupt, but Annette kept talking.

“Felix left too,” she blurted after a deep inhale, slightly tightening her grip on the book in her hands.

“I know,” Lysithea sighed after a moment of reluctance, the realisation hitting her that Felix probably never told his friends he was joining the Alliance forces. 

“…How?” Annette stuttered, her eyes narrowing beneath her furrowed brow, soon widening again with disbelief as she pieced the answer together before Lysithea could work past the pang of guilt in her stomach.

“He came to the monastery,” she managed, though watching Annette begin to pace along the side of the bookshelf, obsessively tapping her book into the palm of her hand only heightened the shame Lysithea felt.

This was ridiculous. Lysithea knew she had no reason to feel guilty. It’s not as if _she_ had made Felix join their forces. She never spoke to him about why he came to them – in fact, she had actually made a grand effort to dodge the topic altogether. It wouldn’t take a scholar to connect the dots.

Of course, there were those few moments where Lysithea wished that Felix was around – for the war effort, more than anything else. He was an invaluable soldier and he had a practical mind, much like herself. Lysithea had always thought he never seemed too suited to becoming Duke Fraldarius, essentially the second most powerful person in Faerghus nobility, behind only the King himself. 

It’s as if it was written on the walls. Mostly, Lysithea wondered how nobody else saw it coming. 

“We were… a family,” Annette said, avoiding eye contact as her voice broke, her knuckles white from gripping the top rail of the chair in front of her, “We were all a family, and we were going to get through it, but then he left, and joined _you_.” 

“Annette, I really don’t think–“

“He picked _you!_ ” Annette blurted, her eyes aflame with rage as she finally met Lysithea’s gaze, blinking away tears. 

A flush ran across Annette’s face as Lysithea struggled with a response.

“He picked your side,” Annette corrected herself after composing herself a little, straightening her back, and she turned away again to browse the bookshelves, “He joined you over us.” 

Lysithea sat staring down at the desk, trying to make sense of the true meanings behind Annette’s words. She had no clue how to approach her and couldn’t predict what she was feeling. Back at the monastery, the two of them were friends, Lysithea liked to think. She knew that the Lions had some sort of bond with each other that she couldn’t necessarily relate to, even Felix, who was always so cold to his classmates. 

From Lysithea’s point of view, Annette and Felix were always much like siblings. Truth be told, there weren’t many instances where she saw the two of them at the same time, but whenever she did, Felix had always seemed softer – happier. His smile was easier. Some may have interpreted their friendship as something more, but Lysithea guessed neither of them never really had an interest in that. 

At least, that was what she believed until this conversation. 

“He joined you, and he left us,” Annette repeated, seemingly more to herself than to Lysithea.

“He must have fought by our side because he believed in our cause,” Lysithea said cautiously, summing up the courage to stand from the table and by Annette’s side. 

As Lysithea came closer, Annette hurried to wipe her cheeks with her sleeve and sniffled before she spoke. 

“Felix was always very fond of you,” she said with a heavy smile, squeezing one of Lysithea’s hands before turning away to the books once more. 

With every word Annette said, she only sent Lysithea into even more of a spiral. She stood beside her, speechless, tentatively piecing together her next words in her mind.

“I’m sure that the reason he came to us was simply that he agreed with us,” she said, reluctantly resting a hand on Annette’s shoulder, “At least, more than he agreed with Dimitri.”

Annette scoffed as she shook her head. 

“Don’t say his name,” she said in a low voice, her words veiled with dormant misery, shaking Lysithea’s hand from her shoulder as she stepped away. 

Lysithea furrowed her brow and fiddled with the cuffs of her sleeves as her eyes lingered on Annette. Once or twice she went to speak, but found she cut her own words off before they could reach her lips. 

“I’m going to head to my office,” she said after clearing her throat, tapping her foot on the floor before stepping away, “I’ll probably be there if you need to find me. It’s on the ground floor, in the west wing – the first door in the corridor behind the courtyard gates.” 

She moved just a couple of steps away before Annette spoke. 

“What was he like?” She asked. Lysithea balled her fists and closed her eyes as she sighed as silently as possible. 

“Different,” she managed, after biting her cheek for a moment, her back still turned as she responded, “Disheartened. He wasn’t as outwardly irritable as he was back then. He was quieter. I didn’t see him often.” 

Due to the silence of the library, Lysithea overheard Annette’s shaky inhale before she spoke once again.

“Do you know where he is now?” 

“No,” Lysithea simply responded after taking a deep inhale of her own, crossing her arms. She hadn’t thought of Felix in a while. She had managed a good while, trying her best not to think about him. 

After no further words from Annette, Lysithea began walking away again.

“You’ll get your funding,” Annette called from behind, “I’ll see to it.” 

Lysithea knew that that should have pleased her, but it didn’t. 

As she headed to the library’s doors, she was sure she overheard Annette mutter to herself, “You always win.”

* * *

Her ears ring. Her vision is white. Every nerve in her being is so overwhelmed she cannot even remember her own name.

Lysithea blinks hard in desperate attempt to grasp sight of what is going on. She pushes herself up on sore hands, her head pounding with pressure. Her lungs burn in her chest and her body quivers as she catches her breath. 

The sky had fallen. The sky… had _fallen_? 

Noises start to fade in, but they are extremely muffled, as if she is under water. 

The mad rumble of feet and hooves pounding the ground in panic. 

“Hey!”

Blood-curdling screams. People are hurt.

“Hey!”

Shouts of orders. She needs to help. 

“Lysithea!”

Her vision gradually clears, but it is still incredibly blurry, as if she is under water. 

The fortress city is in ruins. No one can be alive down there. 

On the hill with her, soldiers are strewn as far as her eyes can see. Bloodier than they were during battle. 

The lights that came from the sky… the sky had fallen. 

Her senses slowly crawl back one by one. She can feel her body again. She feels the familiar pain in her hands and forearms of overexerted magic use. 

There is also an unfamiliar pain, through her whole body. Like she was thrown against a wall.

Her muscles and bones scream at her as she is lifted from the ground. 

“Hey, hey. Keep your eyes open.”

But she’s so tired.

She opens her eyes again.

“That’s it. That’s it. Look at me.”

Felix. 

_Felix, did you see the sky falling?_

“You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

His chest is comfy. 

“Don’t close your eyes!”

She strains to make the tiniest movement. She holds his jacket, rubbing her thumb on the hem.

“Please don’t close your eyes!” 

He smells like blood and sweat and fire. Like war. 

She’s so tired.

“Lysithea, stay awake for me.” 

It’s too soon for this.

“Wake up!”

_I’m trying._

“Wake up!”

_I won’t die yet._

“Please, wake up!”

_Wake up!_

Lysithea woke with a start in her bed. The candle at her bedside was still burning away. The bright summer moon shone between her unclosed curtains through the tall window, overlooking the port of Derdriu in the distance. The curtains swayed with the gentle night sea breeze.

A strong twinge of pain shot through her chest, and she rubbed it with great pressure to relieve it as she sat up. This was not an unfamiliar feeling. Next to her, her journal was buried beneath her bedsheets. Between the pages was the letter she had received that day from Claude.

Claude had dug up yet another promising scholar in another corner of the world. This time, he was from Albinea – that was new. They hadn't worked with anyone from Albinea yet. There wasn’t much written up about the continent, other than those few documents reporting its small population or shocking cold winds.

She tucked the letter in the drawer of her bedside, out of sight. 

With a stretch, Lysithea pulled herself out from her bed, picking up the cup of water on her bedside, and heading over to sit in the bay of her window. Sitting on the cushioned bay, she leant back against the frame as she looked over the aquatic city, still bustling at this time of night. 

It wasn’t unusual for Lysithea to have dreams about the war. She had never known a point in her life where she _didn’t_ have haunting dreams – before the war, it was vague flashes of the crest experiments she suffered as an infant. She hardly ever dreamt of that time anymore. Not since that day the Emperor first declared war. 

It also wasn’t unusual for Lysithea to have dreams about Felix. Whether they came in the form of memories or pure dreams, he tended to appear often. Odd, she thought, since she was never the closest with him – they got along well, of course, and she couldn’t deny that she felt _something_ for him, even if she was unsure what it was. He turned up in her dreams just as much as her class friends, if not even more often. 

Somewhere inside herself, Lysithea had made the connection that Felix turned up so much in her dreams because she thought of him before sleeping. That made sense. There’s definitely some logic behind that. And she really did think of him often. It was a habit she had picked up during the war, thinking of things that soothed her, in order to lull herself to sleep. 

Of course, it was a war, and nothing was soothing. But even by just being there, Felix soothed her.

The war had officially ended almost an entire year ago, Lysithea tried to remind herself. It was time to stop thinking about Felix. 

If he had wanted to be the person that helped send her off to sleep when she struggled, he would have stayed. He wouldn’t have left so soon. 

Curse Annette. She had done so well this time, forcing herself to stop thinking about him. 

If he had felt the same, she would have known. 

It was time to stop thinking about him. 

_Oh, Felix,_ she wondered, _where in the world might you be now?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a quick note - you may notice ive updated the archive warnings to also include graphic violence. this will be in the next chapter (chapter 16) ONLY so if it is something that may affect you, i wanted to make sure you'd be aware of when it was coming. it also isn't /entirely/ relevant to read - if you'd prefer to skip the chapter, you'll still be able to understand the rest of the story! so if it is something that will affect you, please keep yourselves safe :)


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another !!! warning !!! for graphic violence in the first quarter of this chapter !!!! please skim past it if its going to affect you!!!! ok thats all i hope you enjoy the chapter :)

Year 1187, Ethereal Moon

The winter air whistled between the trees as Felix trudged through layers of snow, resting a hand on the hilt of his sword. It was getting late and the forest’s evening fog was beginning to set in. Luckily, with his eyes set on the glow of a campfire in the distance, Felix was closing in on his current target.

His job was to eliminate a small group of Imperial loyalists who had been causing trouble in Hrym territory, on the old Empire-Alliance border. At this point, Felix was far past caring for allegiance – he had killed Imperial loyalist packs, new United Kingdom generals, and even, rarely, lone Agarthan remnants. Nothing much phased him anymore, and he suited his work very well.

A successful mercenary, Felix was revered – and feared – among nobles and commoners alike. He left the monastery almost immediately after the end of the war, unable to settle into a role of political significance, instead choosing the thrill of the fight like he had always done. After over a year of that work, he’d managed to build up quite the reputation. But even those mercenaries with the strongest standings still struggled to afford a comfortable life.

Felix would easily strike down any enemy as long as he’d be paid a sum in return. Killing became natural. He grew numb, and then he moved further past numb. In the moment it was always simple, it was always just a job, nothing more and nothing less. 

Everyone has jobs. Felix’s just happened to be taking others’ lives.

Despite his surprisingly easy impassive mindset, Felix suffered through the nights more often than not, and rarely ever slept (though, that was part and parcel of the lifestyle). But it wasn’t ever the faces of those he struck down that kept him awake. Instead, it was the faces of those he had left behind. 

Memories of his Faerghus classmates reeled in his mind on an endless cycle. After Ashe vanished in one of the war’s most decisive battles, Felix had no link left to any of them. Rationally, he knew that they must all be dead – the Kingdom was almost entirely wiped out and its nobility was reconstructed, so it was the only believable truth. 

Out of all seven, the only two he certainly knew had perished were Ingrid and Dimitri. Dedue, by extension, would likely have fallen by Dimitri’s side, so Felix was quick to rule him out as well.

Felix did not catch sight of Sylvain, Mercedes or Annette once throughout the war, nor did he hear even a whisper of them – strange, especially for Sylvain, considering the prominence of House Gautier. Due to that, a part of him desperately clung to the tiniest hope that somehow, somewhere, they might still be alive. 

But then, if they were alive, and Felix were to cross paths with them, he’s sure they’d want nothing more than to strike him down themselves for running when they – and their country – needed him more than ever. It was what he deserved.

As he grew closer to the camp, Felix overheard the merry songs the group sang, blissfully unaware of his presence in the shadows. Casting away his thoughts, he tucked himself behind a tree as he began forming his plan of attack. 

There were five men – enough of a challenge, though it was nothing he couldn’t handle. The unpredictability of his attack worked in his favour – the men were relaxed and unarmed around the fire, their weapons and armour presumably in their tents or storage. That meant that, if Felix made the right moves in the right order, he’d probably be able to take out up to three of the men before the others could get back to him with swords in their hands. 

In this instance, he could also use the fire to his advantage, though he’d prefer to avoid the scent and shrieks of the men as their flesh gradually burnt off their bones. So, Felix took to his mental drawing board, flicking through his metaphorical catalogue of useful methods to get the job done. 

Over time, Felix learnt the swiftest ways to deliver a fatal blow. A stab in the neck, a quick slice just across the right zone of the thighs, a heavy blow to the head – even the most gruesome attacks wouldn’t provoke so much as a flinch out of him anymore. It was just work, and he was damn good at it, that was for sure.

As a mercenary, he wielded a broadsword – it was reliable, not too heavy (and yet not too lightweight), and its double-sided blade proved more than favourable. He carried not one, but two spares of the same sword. Even though he rarely made use of the other two, it was smart to keep hold of backups, especially when constantly living on such an unreliable budget. 

Before moving in on the group, Felix circled the area, ascertaining to himself that there was no backup around or anyone else who might interfere. It was impressive how quietly he could move, especially with the snow on the ground, but Felix had grown into nothing short of a master in all sorts of conditions. 

Shutting his eyes, Felix took a deep breath and exhaled through circled lips as he silently drew his sword, holding it in a double-handed grip. He re-angled his hands on the hilt two, three times before settling, and lightly bounced on his heels before charging his unassuming targets. 

_ Alright _ , he thought to himself, clearing his mind of all else but the kill.

_ Go. _

Felix skulked up silently behind the first target until his last three steps, when he let out a gravelly yell and raised his sword above his head. Initiating a strong downward strike, Felix felt a familiar buzz in his veins and, on impact, his crest flared; its blinding glow rendered the surrounding men sightless as they frantically stumbled from their seats and hurried for arms. Felix’s blade struck clean in the center of the target’s head, easily sinking some inches into bone. Blood trickled from the wound (rather boringly, if one were to ask, but Felix would deny he had any sort of bloodthirst) as the glow and steady thrum of the Fraldarius crest fizzled out into nothingness. 

_ One. _

Wasting no time, Felix yanked his blade from its crack in the first target’s skull before twisting his torso in the perfect angle to plunge it tip-first in between a second target’s chin and shoulder, a spot that he knew one of the largest arteries flowed through. The sword sunk deep into the target’s torso and made an appalling squelch sound as Felix pulled it out again. Blood spouted from the wound as he had planned, staining his tattered clothes as the body collapsed lifelessly beside the first at his feet.

“That’s more like it,” Felix growled as he readjusted his blade in his hand, a habitual smirk crawling upon his blood-spattered face. 

_ Two. _

The remaining targets had barely the time to rise to their feet before Felix locked in on a third. He only needed to take two nimble steps closer before being in range to attack. Ignoring the target’s frantic pleas, Felix swung his sword low, slicing a deep gash across the front of his thighs, slashing through another thick artery. Blood flooded from the devastating cuts just as quickly as they had opened up, and the body fell to the floor with a gargled groan. 

_ Three. _

Blood pooled around the third body as it writhed, and Felix’s ears pricked up as one of the two remaining men cried out from far behind. 

_ Foolish _ , Felix thought as he heard heavy footsteps approaching,  _ you’ve given yourself away. _

With a swift turn, Felix instinctively blocked the target’s predictable attack, parrying the blow on a parallel angle. The target was quick to process the block, but Felix moved quicker, and plunged his sword deep into his stomach. He felt his blade just barely glide against the target’s spine as it perforated entirely through his abdomen and out the other side. Bubbles of blood gurgled from the target’s mouth, the body slipping naturally off of Felix’s sword as it fell to the ground. 

_ Four. _

Felix was quick to sense the last target’s sloppy attempt of a jab from behind him, swiftly darting to the left to dodge it. Once more, the recognisable buzz of Felix’s crest purred in his limbs and he yelled on a swing of his sword, the strength of the hit rooted in his shoulder as he turned around with the blow. He sliced the target’s head clean off, the added crest power sending it flying off into the woods. As the body fell, blood spurted up and out of the cut-off wound, drenching Felix almost like rain as the Fraldarius crest faded in front of him and dissipated into the empty air once more. 

“Five,” Felix counted out loud as his eyes followed the falling decapitated body. As he caught his breath, he wiped his eyes and lips with the back of his glove, spitting out the blood that had found its way into his mouth.

* * *

For some hours, Felix wandered north through the forest, and eventually happened upon a small village, lifeless in the middle of the night. He quickly located the town’s tailor shop and was relieved to see the dim glow of candlelight through a grubby window. The old floorboards creaked as he stepped onto the deck, and he faltered for a moment as his bloodied glove met the door handle. 

Felix peered down at the clothes on his body, his layers splattered and soaked through with blood which had mostly hardened during the hours he walked. He knew in the moment that they’d be past a washing, save his thick winter cloak, which had mostly failed to shield the rest of his gear. His undershirt was salvageable, maybe, if it could weather one last tough scrubbing. His old trousers had already been falling apart at the seams, and it was about time to retire them. 

He reached a hand to his gold pouch that hung from his belt, running a finger over the measly number of coins inside. Sighing to himself, Felix entered the shop, the keeper’s bell ringing as the door opened. 

The store somehow seemed even smaller inside; it was lit by the faint glow of table candles, and meagre displays sided the two walls, with another running down the centre of the room. The displays presented a handful of items for children, women, and finally men along the wall furthest from the entrance. 

“Good evening, Sir,” an old voice greeted him hesitantly from the counter as he approached the display. Felix did not look up or return her greeting. 

Running a thumb along the stitches, Felix quickly evaluated a short woolen tunic, a pair of tough leather gloves, and trousers made of a loose fabric that became more form-fitting at the calves. He felt the shopkeeper’s eyes burning a hole through him as she watched him attentively from across the room.

_ Not much else to choose from _ , Felix thought, and he collected the three items in one hand. 

The heels of his boots were heavy on the floorboards as he walked to the counter and placed the items down. His gaze rose to land on the shopkeeper – short, grey and wrinkled, her face mutely painted with fear as she looked back at him, dirtied, bloodied, and probably gaunt with exhaustion.

Opposite to the shopkeeper’s unease, Felix nonchalantly tossed his gold pouch beside the pile of clothes on the counter. The shopkeeper’s eyes flitted between Felix and the items a couple times before she tentatively took his pouch, unlacing the thin leather tie and emptying the coins out. 

Felix stood with his arms crossed in front of him, tapping his foot impatiently as the shopkeeper counted the coins. 

“...I’m afraid you’re thirty gold short, Sir,” she said in a small voice, seemingly avoiding laying eyes on his blood-smeared face. 

Clenching his jaw, Felix stared through a scowl at the shopkeeper, hoping to drive a hard bargain through his icy eyes alone. 

And it worked, as per usual, as she took his coins in one hand and pushed the clothes to him across the counter. 

Felix pursed his lips as the shopkeeper nodded at him, responding with a small nod back as he collected his pouch and items and left the tailor’s shop as swiftly as he had entered. 

Under the pale moonlight, Felix followed the cobble paths through the village until he reached a creek that ran at the edge of the forest. He grew dizzy as he kneeled beside the water, hunger catching up to him after his mission was completed. He hadn’t eaten since that morning, and even that was the measly ends of the rations he had on him. But before he could try to swindle a meal anywhere, he’d have to wash away the blood caked on his skin and clothes.

As he settled by the creek and removed his layers, a familiar feeling set in. It was hard to describe; a feeling of emptiness, as if his body was hollow, and he was a soulless vessel walking the earth. For more than a year Felix had just wandered and wandered, taking life after life, waiting for the day he’d face a foe strong enough to end his own. 

If the war was unreal, Felix was out of words for what life felt like after it. 

He sometimes wondered what it might have been like if he’d chosen to rise to his title. He couldn’t envision a single thing he would grow to love about that life. 

Of course, he wasn’t happy in this life either, but he was free – free from the confinements that becoming Duke Fraldarius would have trapped him in, even in a new, reborn Fódlan. 

Free from the suffocation of aristocratic drivel, day in day out, that he’d hated from a young age. He had always wondered how his father managed to put up with it – and even then, Faerghus nobles were by far the easiest to deal with, in comparison to the leagues in Leicester and Adrestia.

Free from ever having to marry and produce heirs – Felix’s practical view, and only view, of having children – which that society would have demanded. He didn’t see himself as a paternal man at all. He’d never marry out of necessity, so he’d have to find love first to even get to that point. And he was more than certain that love would never come around for someone like him. It was best not to dwell on that thought, though. 

Felix had entirely faded from the world. No one from any part of his past even knew that he was alive. It was a lonely life, and it was exactly what he had wanted. 

Often, he considered himself selfish for choosing this path. Felix considered himself a selfish person in general, especially in parallel to the Kingdom's traits of being selfless and dutiful. 

But he never really saw anything too wrong with being selfish. As long as his choices bettered himself, what else could possibly matter?

On a sigh, Felix cupped his hands in the creek and brought water to his face and hair, closing his tired eyes as he rinsed. Bloody droplets dripped down his bare chest as he washed, and he tried his best to numb his thoughts of it. Over time, Felix had grown numb to most anything. He was numb to even the freezing cold creek water, remaining entirely unphased by the goosebumps that crept upon his blood-covered skin.

The blood of five people – with names, and lives, and histories, and most likely families. Felix had killed them. Felix was alive, caked in the blood of  _ five  _ people he had killed in a span of less than two minutes or so. And he felt nothing apart from his hunger.

Though he resented admitting it, in that past year, Felix had reminded himself of someone he had once known very well. 

Felix always told himself he didn’t have a thirst for blood, unlike Dimitri did, but rather that killing had simply grown boring. Work would often become stagnant and uneventful, so of course he enjoyed fights more when he was more… creative with his techniques. Anyone would feel the same, he tried to assure himself. 

Dimitri was always past saving. Felix was just trying to survive. 

The droplets of water rolling down his body gradually purified of all blood as he washed himself clean in the creek. 

Felix was exhausted. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to curl beside the water and fall asleep, not caring when he’d wake or who might find him. He had nothing of worth to be stolen from him, anyway. Instead of giving into that urge, Felix glanced down to his old clothes, strewn on the ground beside him after taking them off. 

He didn’t bother washing the items he’d purchased replacements for. For the undershirt, the best he could do was to try soaking the stains from the sleeves. He hoped most of the thickest stains would lift somewhat with the water alone, before the next time he’d be able to give it a proper scrub. He hadn’t a clue of when that would be. 

Standing on achy muscles, Felix dressed himself in the new trousers, and knelt back down as he cupped more water from the soft stream, washing the shirt’s sleeves as much as possible whilst avoiding drenching it too much. To his relief, the hardened blood lifted slightly, although the shirt would probably never be stainless again. 

_ It’ll do for now, _ he thought to himself as he wrung the sleeves out over the creek, the bloody water tainting his skin as he squeezed it from the fabric. After giving it a final shake, he redressed in his layers, and threw his discarded clothes into the creek. He rested a hand on the hilt of his sword and sighed as he watched the tattered rags drift away in the stream. 

As he stood to head back to the village, Felix took one last glance down at the water, and he could have sworn he saw Dimitri’s face in the reflection instead of his own. 

* * *

Felix wandered the winding paths in the village; it was ghost-like in the silent night, lit by only the excess of candles through the windows of the little houses. He soon approached an inn, quieter than the ones he usually encountered while travelling, and peeked through a window to size it up. 

The inn was small, and rather empty, with only three of the tables occupied by customers chatting or playing games. Felix ducked away from the window and leant his head back against the wall, running over the image of the customers in his mind, forming the safest plan to pickpocket one of them without getting caught. 

Though he was rather good at being sneaky in large crowds, it would be difficult to catch any of the men off guard in the inn – though relaxed, they were all attentive and would notice any suspicious activity. He’d likely get caught, and then he’d have to fight them; he’d win, easily, but he generally liked to avoid as much bloodshed as possible. There’s no need to slaughter a tavern full of men over one meal. He’d just have to wait for the next opportunity to eat, or starve to death before getting the chance; he was indifferent to either option. 

Felix spent a brief moment discarding multiple plans before he grew too frustrated with himself. He shook his head to dismiss the pickpocketing idea entirely and made his way inside.

As he entered, the lively customers quietened down, their eyes following him in suspicion as he took the steps from the doorway to the bar. Beneath his cloak, Felix habitually rested a hand on the hilt of his sword, his icy eyes flitting between the men in the tavern in distrust. 

Felix pulled a barstool out for himself, and winced at the scraping sound it made against the rotting wooden floorboards. The rest of the men, seemingly released their wariness as Felix slumped into the chair, returning to their conversations and card games in a low lull. 

The grating scrape was also heard by the barkeep, notifying him of a customer, and he soon came around to serve Felix. 

“Alright, Sir,” the barkeep said with a warm smile as he washed a metal tankard with a dishcloth, though his smile faded slightly as he laid eyes on Felix, “What can I get ya?” 

“Just water,” he exhaled, his tired eyes boring through the bar’s surface as he zoned out. The barkeep nodded and promptly put his tankard on the counter, the sound of the metal meeting the wooden counter startling Felix. 

A mere few seconds passed before the low voices in the tavern were overpowered by a group of louder people who suddenly entered. A mercenary group of about sixteen bustled in, bringing with them an irritating commotion that grated on Felix’s already naturally short temper. He did not turn around to take a look at them. 

The barkeep returned with a different tankard full of water, nonchalantly sliding it in front of Felix. Felix’s muscles ached at even the small movement of reaching to hook his fingers around the handle. 

“That’s fifteen gold, that is,” the barkeep said as Felix lifted the tankard to his lips. His action froze at the bartender’s words. 

As the barkeep awaited payment, he picked up the metal tankard and began scrubbing it again. Before Felix could piece together a clever argument, a voice chimed in from behind him. A female voice. A familiar voice. Felix closed his eyes and sighed as he quickly recognised her. 

“You’re gonna charge? For  _ water? _ ” The voice asked accusingly, stepping closer and hopping into the seat beside Felix.

Victim of the mercenary woman’s challenging stare, the barkeep subconsciously paused his scrubbing, stammering over his words a couple times before ultimately giving way. Felix didn’t even need to glance at her face to know the expression. 

“...On the house, Sir,” the barkeep nodded to Felix, and then turned to the woman and asked, “What can I get for you… uh… Madam?” 

The woman scoffed. “Two plates of meat, bread, and cheese. Whatever sort, I’m not picky. And your largest tankard full of ale. And you’ll refill my partner here’s water as often as he wishes.” 

The barkeep nodded once more and disappeared off into the kitchen. 

“Pinelli,” Felix grumbled with a shake of his head, unable to meet her eyes.

“Fraldarius,” Leonie returned the greeting, warmer than Felix’s, and gave a playful punch to his achy arm, “You come here often?” 

The most Felix could manage was an exhausted chuckle and another head shake. 

“I don’t need your help,” he said, harsher than he would have liked. 

“Ouch,” Leonie tutted, “Not only did you leave the monastery like a gust of wind, without a single farewell, but on the miraculous crossing of our fated paths you can’t even greet your old pal with the slightest hint of warmth?”

Finally, Felix lifted his gaze from the counter to meet Leonie’s eyes. In the past year alone, she had gained a number of scars on her face. Her skin was tanner than the last time Felix saw her, and she had ditched her shoulder-length haircut for a shaved head. 

“You’re so dramatic,” he scoffed.

When Felix’s eyes met Leonie’s, she smiled at him, a soft and welcoming glow on her toughened face. 

“Felix, not to be rude or anything,” she continued, “This comes from the best place in my heart, I promise – you look like you’re on the brink of death.” 

Felix chuckled. The second he felt a smile upon his face, he forced himself to drop it. 

“I don’t need your help, Leonie,” he reiterated, just as the barkeep returned with two large plates full of everything Leonie requested, holding a giant tankard between his arm and torso. 

Leonie naturally tossed a chunky gold pouch across the counter to him, and spoke to Felix as she arranged the plates.

“Hey,” she said, “Maybe I’m  _ not  _ helping you. I could just be buying an old friend a meal simply because I want to. Think of it like that instead.” 

She pushed one of the two plates in front of Felix. “Eat up,” she said, taking a large bite of bread and cheese as she spoke.

Reluctantly, Felix laid a slice of beef on top of one half of a bread roll. Just because he felt guilt all the time doesn’t mean that it ever got any easier.

“So,” Felix started awkwardly, though Leonie was relaxed, “You seem to have done well for yourself.” 

“Jeralt’s merc group,” she said through full cheeks with an enthusiastic nod, “Crazy how even though the fighting ended, it never  _ really  _ ended.” 

“I know what you mean,” Felix said.

“You’re a merc too?” Leonie asked, though her question was void of any surprise.

“Mhm,” he hummed as he swallowed, “Nothing else I’m good for.” 

“Hey, you were good at a lot of stuff.”

Felix waved a hand, dismissing that direction of conversation. 

“Are you... struggling?” Leonie asked.

“Not really,” Felix simply replied, “I just… don’t get paid all that well.” 

“Ah, well then,” Leonie scoffed, and Felix winced as she elbowed him in the ribs, “You’re just not playing the game right.” 

Felix wasn’t sure that much in his life felt like a game anymore. 

“You know,” Leonie started gently, resting her head on her hand as she looked at Felix, “You could join me. The guys would be happy to have you.”

“I can’t,” Felix quickly declined.

“Why not?” Leonie questioned him, “Do you already have a group?” 

“I want to– I  _ should  _ be alone,” he said. 

Alone was the only future Felix could foresee for himself. Alone was the only future he deserved. Whenever he had people, he always abandoned them. Always. 

Felix decided that the best way to avoid hurting others was to not be around others at all.

Noticing the lack of elaboration in Felix’s response, Leonie spoke again. 

“It doesn’t look like being alone is doing you a lot of good,” she said.

Felix’s anxiety grew unbearable. 

“I should go,” he blurted, cleaning his hands off and grabbing his gloves from the side as he stood and made for the door.

“Hey!” Leonie called from the bar. “I paid for your meal! The least you can do is come back and actually finish it, even if you don’t wanna talk.”

For a moment, Felix hesitated, but he decided to turn around and join her. To finish the meal, at least. He’d be smart to eat as much as he could, whenever he could.

And, he was sort of pleased to see her. Sort of.

“I’d like to talk,” Felix said sheepishly as he turned to face Leonie. She responded with a beaming smile.

* * *

“Are you sure?” Felix asked Leonie for about the fiftieth time. “A horse?”

“Take him,” Leonie chuckled, patting the brown steed affectionately, “We always travel with more than we need. He’s a good one.”

“What’s his name?” Felix asked as he introduced himself to the horse, giving him a scratch on the neck. 

“Jeralt,” Leonie said.

Felix grimaced at her. Leonie broke her poker face and burst out laughing.

“I’m joking!” She laughed. “He’s called Archie.”

“Archie,” Felix repeated with a nod as he continued petting the horse. He walked to his side, climbing into the saddle with ease, a skill from his earliest training sessions in House Fraldarius that one never quite forgot. Leonie was searching through her bag for something.

“Listen, Felix,” she said, stepping closer and looking up at him, “I know you said you don’t need help, but, well – here, just take this.”

Leonie held out a thick pouch of coins in her hand. 

“I can’t,” Felix said, his eyes immediately darting away the second he processed what she held.

“Come on!” Leonie raised her voice, glaring up at Felix beneath a furrowed brow, though it wasn’t much of an angry glare – more a desperate one.

“No!” Felix shouted back while he focused on adjusting the saddle, hoping to have the final word. 

“Please,” Leonie said, and Felix detected an underlying pain in her tone, “I can afford to give you this, and it will help you. At least until your next pay comes along. Just take it.” 

Felix made the mistake of meeting her eyes. He scowled as he worked his way past the embarrassment of taking the money from her. 

“Why won’t you join me?” She asked again before Felix could accept her gold. He clenched his jaw. 

Felix wouldn’t join her because she, like all those he had held close through his life, was nothing but a reminder of what he had lost. It was his own fault that he had lost it, because he ran away. 

He would never be able to justify to anyone his choice in path. Choosing the mercenary life, where he knew he would struggle in so many different ways – fiscally, physically, and even mentally; though he tried to convince himself out of the last one – but to him, that was an easier, a simpler, a more understandable life than taking his position as Duke Fraldarius would ever have been.

All he knew was to run. Run from his father, run from Dimitri, run from his classmates, run from the Kingdom, run from the Alliance.

In truth, Felix never felt too close to most of the old Golden Deer roster during the wartime. Most of them went out of their way to avoid him, apart from two – Leonie, who had somehow become a close friend and valued sparring partner, and Lysithea. 

The second Lysithea popped into Felix’s mind, he instinctively cast her away again. 

He wasn’t sure how much more guilt he could take. 

“I work alone,” he said, simply.

Leonie seemed to give in.

“Well,” she said, her face and voice softening, “If we end up crossing paths again someday, there will always be a spare hammock in our camp with your name on it.” 

She pushed the pouch in her hand even further towards Felix, and looked up at him with an expectant eyebrow raise.

Hesitantly, Felix took the pouch of coins. Leonie gave a sorry smile and crossed her arms.

“Thank you,” Felix said, and he considered reaching down to rest a hand on her shoulder. He soon decided against it. 

“Don’t mention it,” she said. 

An awkward moment passed where neither of them knew what to say to each other. Leonie kicked at the snow with her feet. Felix remembered the day she had first called him her partner.

“Goodbye, Leonie,” he said, and he clicked to his horse as he secured his grip on the reins. 

“You stay alive, partner,” she called after him as he rode off into the snowy night. 

Felix was certain he would never find a place, a person, a  _ home  _ that he wouldn’t run from. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!! here is a warning that the /next/ chapter will have sex adjacent content at the end - nothing super explicit but there will be undressing and nakey bodies and wandering hands and so much kissing and many Thoughts ..... but nothing smut and nothing explicit. just wanted to put a cw out there!

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twitter @fhirdiad_ :)  
> thank u for reading! :D


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